Every muscle ached when I sat down in the plane for the flight home. I had just left the World Barefoot Center in Winter Haven, Florida, where I spent a few days barefoot water skiing.
“What happened to your eye?” my son asked when he picked me up at Midway airport.
“Ah, I fell backwards and popped a blood vessel,” I explained.
I was also sporting a colorful collection of bruises dotting my body and a swollen tongue.
At the age of 44, I took up the extreme sport of barefooting again–more than 25 years after becoming deaf from a fall. I spent three days in a boat with three other gals, but at age 45, I was the youngest one there. Kim Taylor is 48, Claudia Landon is 58– and at 68 years of age, Judy Myers is the world’s oldest female competitive barefoot water skier.
“Suck it up,” Judy told me when I dared to complain about my aching body on the second day. When I watch her on the water–I find it hard to believe that this woman is almost seventy years old. Her nickname is the “Old Lady,” but she skims on the water– backwards, forwards and on one foot. Even when she falls at 36 mph, there’s a smile on her face when she surfaces.
I’m thankful I met Judy– because she changed my life and gave me a whole new way to look forward to the years ahead. She smashes the stereotypes of what it means to grow older– reminding me that “old age” is nothing but a state of mind. As we add more candles to the birthday cake each year, it seems like it’s all too easy to buy into the notion that we are supposed to slow down and become more careful as we age. We are often bombarded with messages that perpetuate the stereotypes of aging, or what I call the “I’m-too-old-to-do-that” syndrome. Instead of accepting the status quo, why not go out and be the first person to shatter the age myth?
Take Jim Boyette, for example. He took up barefoot water skiing at the age of 45 and began to compete in barefoot tournaments. Every single year, he shows up at the Barefoot Nationals and has not missed a tournament since he started in 1978. That’s right– do the math– Jim is 83 years old and still competes in an extreme sport. And to top it off, Jim has Charcot Marie Tooth disease– which atrophies his feet and arms, but he doesn’t let that stop him on the water. As Samuel Ullman once said, “Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
Published in the Chicago Tribune, May 2011