i’m in physical therapy now. i had back surgery a few months ago. so after a suitably miserable recovery period, i have to go three times a week for medieval stretching sessions dictated by heinrich himmler, except that he looks exactly like kim basinger, only more attractive. feel very, very sorry for me.
but i’m not complaining. in fact, as you might have surmised by today’s title, i’m complaining about complaining.
i did indeed have a miserable post-op recovery period. but that was only because i had major damage before i started and the surgery had a lot more to fix than they even thought before they started, which was a lot to start with. of course there was misery. but misery is productive. i was under strict doctor’s orders to take it easy, not lift anything at all, and drive my partner kirk nuts. so i obliged. i’m a good patient. i got better, better enough to be able to do some physical therapy.
so i went to physical therapy, which i’d never done before. here is a roomful of people who have limited use of various body parts and need to do specific things to make those parts better or at least more useful. i’ve been there 7 times, they tell me to do this or that in this or that way, and i do it. one would think of others in the room that if they, say, couldn’t bend their knee, they’d be motivated to do what was asked of them so that they could one day bend their knee again.
one would be wrong.
what a bunch of whiners. no wonder kim has become so heinrich-y. “but it hurts to do that,” they say. “i don’t think i should have to hurt,” they say. “this is hard work,” they say. yes, it is. welcome to the world at large which you’ve not yet joined, apparently. did you hurt before? yes you did. do you hurt now? yes you do. will you hurt a year from now if you don’t shut up and put some effort in? yes you will. so if you are going to hurt anyway, then why shouldn’t you hurt productively? but no.
i’ll admit, i’m a bit of a whiner myself. you have read some of the other blogs, right? but i have the sense to know the difference between whining here, which is totally benign because no one reads or cares about this anyway, and whining there, which after all would just mean that i’d have to go more times and whine even more about my lack of progress.
but here is a room full of people who are used to having their way. they can barely stay off their cell phones long enough to half-ass do their exercises. and they leave halfway through, saying they have to be somewhere. and then they come back the next time, not having done their exercises for homework, and complain that they aren’t getting better. and so on. vicious circle time.
it’s times like these that i realize, as messed up as i am, that at least i accept personal responsibility for things. which is something else that people whine about nowadays, but rarely actually do. not in my backyard and such.
so, classmates. i don’t want to hear your whining. especially when your whining means that my insurance goes up because you go to twice as many physical therapy sessions as you actually need.
no. that’s wrong. i selfishly want you to whine, because it motivates me to kick ass on my exercises so i won’t have to be there in the first place to listen to you whine.
and then i can get to work earlier so i can hear them whine.
perfect.
