a few years back on a ski trip i took a headlong spill and separated my shoulder. this is a very different injury than 'dislocating' your shoulder which seems to me to be the nastier of the two main shoulder injuries. a shoulder separtion i'm told is rather trivial and commonplace. that said, it still hurts. separated AC joints, the technical name, typically happen when blunt force trauma is applied to the top of the shoulder. the 'separated' part is talking about your collarbone coming loose from the ligament that holds it in place on top of your shoulder (the other connector by your neck is still fine). when this happens your collarbone just floats there and sticks up higher than it should, not comically so but enough to be noticed (although a few weeks back i did see a guy with a comically high separation. every time i looked at him i thought how quickly a drywall screw would resolve the issue.).

it seems i have separated my other collarbone. i say 'it seems' because i don't recall it happening. all i know is one day my left shoulder was sore and tender to the touch. i figured i strained muscles there playing tennis or paddle boarding. but then the other day while looking in the mirror i saw that my left collarbone was raised in the air like my ski-busted one and this was definitely not the case before. in giving it a good deal of thought, my best guess is that it happened in my sleep.

recently, i've been thinking on and reading a lot about aging. i've definitely noticed some people seem to age with a lot more grace and success than others and i'm ravenously interested in being part of that happier, healthier group. there is a pretty dominant school of thought out there that some people get old and other people age. between the two you obviously want the latter and i've been working hard to put myself in that camp both mentally and physically. but then you do something like separating your shoulder in your sleep and realize there's lots of headwinds that make signing up for the happier healthier camp a little more rigorous than than standing in this line over here instead of that one over there.

PHOTO: and speaking of aging well, if you're wondering where you get a slice of pie that looks like the one featured above, you have to go back to a place that's been doing it since i was a lad, panhandler's pizza on CSU's campus west in fort collins, co. i've been eating those slices since my high school days and, like life itself, they've gotten nothing but better in time.