Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

We can rebuild him! When NASA astronaut Steve Austin is injured in the crash of an experimental aircraft, he is “rebuilt” in an operation that cost six million dollars. Hopefully, our co-payments for today’s replacement surgeries won’t ever be that high.

I’m going in next week for my second hip replacement. Oh boy!

When I bump into a friend that’s around my age, the subject of “replacement parts” always comes up. My body has been transformed into my old 1967 Dodge Dart. It would keep going as long as you slapped a new part in there every once in a while. As the car aged and the miles started to add up, a new water pump, generator, or starter had to be replaced every once in a while.

My friends have had shoulders, knees, and hips replaced. As we speak several of my friends are awaiting surgeries. When my old clunker of a car needed a part (we’d buy them new only if we had to) or better still, we’d go to Nissenbaum’s Used Auto Parts On Columbia Avenue outside of Union Square.

Thankfully, for the most part when our bodies need new parts they are new in the box! Titanium all the way baby! So what if we set off metal detectors at the airport? We are hopefully pain free. By the way, that’s the way it starts. Pain.

So my mind starts. How did I wreck my hips? Was it wear and tear, aging, or did I inherit arthritis? Probably a mixture. Just the same, I’d like to apologize to my body for some of the reckless activities I did that may have helped wreck my hips.

I’m sorry for: Hundreds of (yummy) trips back-and-forth from McKinnon’s meat market lugging pork roasts, ground beef and one of Ross Blouin’s famous humongous sub sandwiches. Eight years of walking back-and-forth from our house to Saint Clements carrying tons of heavy books. The sledding accident where I was actually airborne for about six seconds before slamming to the ground and being in pain for two weeks. The time I was playing Superman at a college fraternity party and jumped off the porch with a towel around my neck. My short lived skiing career. Several bicycle accidents. A summer of working on a farm moving piles of rocks around.

My four weeks on Emerson Colleges wrestling team. 6 years of religiously insane daily jogging. Dancing in several musicals (my unfortunate tap dancing accident). Walking a dog twice a day for 14 years.

And then there was the car accident at McGrath Highway and Pearl St. We were broadsided by a speeding car running a red light and ejected. Thankfully, we were in a 59 Ford which was built like an army tank. I can’t forget the dozen or so times I jumped off stages during or after a crazy set with The Sleddogs, or The Tools bands (or with The Kiely Band at Northeastern Junior High School class day dance in 1977). I can honestly say I wouldn’t have changed anything. Wear and tear, craziness, old age, it’s all good.

It’s great that they can rebuild us. I only wish they could replace other things I’ve worn out like my patience, parts of my brain, and no doubt, my welcome at times. Items that are unfortunately unavailable at Nissenbaums.