Me and my son David

Both of the same name, and unfortunately, my son has developed some of the same obsessive behavior that I have displayed over the six plus decades of my life.  It’s either a 100% or 0% mentality.  David is now 36 years old, single and is in unbelievable shape thanks to his physical conditioning and marathon and ultra-marathon running schedule.  He is an elite athlete by any definition with his best marathon running event coming close to a 2:30 finish at this last years Chicago Marathon.  Unfortunately, escaping injury from all of the risky training, the running and biking through traffic and unfinished trails, he now finds himself with a “potentially serious knee injury” from a fall yesterday at the Big White Ski Resort in Canada.  The injury seems to be localized to the medial aspect of his right knee, just where the medial meniscus is located.  What is the relevance of this other than the obvious? 

When I was 36 years old, I ran my only marathon (1982), but didn’t enjoy it and was injured for about 3 months because of pushing myself too hard and not being prepared through proper training.  It basically taught me a lesson.  My work schedule did not allow the type of consistent training that was necessary…. I worked too hard, and too many hours and too many nights on call to be able to dedicate the necessary time to my hobbies.  I also played tennis and thus diverted my entire attention to being a weekend warrior at the Kailua Racquet Club…… spending as much time as possible, playing as many sets as the day would allow and sustaining a progressive knee injury that perhaps had its origin in my marathon folly.  When it was all said and done, after ignoring the repetitive knee swelling injury in my right knee for 3-4 years, in 1986 at the age of 40, I had an arthroscopic procedure to remove a piece of torn cartilage from the medial meniscus of my right knee.   I recovered over the next two years, but my right knee is still not quite as strong as my left knee. 

My son’s injury brings back the eerie memory of my own injury as well as the obvious similarities of our past.  It strengthens the argument for the effect of heredity and destiny and weakens the notion of the world acting through random motion; something I professed to believe was the main conductor of all of the events in the universe.