“Don’t read without good light – you’ll wreck your eyes,”
my father said to me, when I was 10.
And “Stretch before and after exercise,”
he must have warned a thousand times back then.
I disagreed and disobeyed, and earned
no consequences from ignoring him.
I thought his vision skewed. I should have learned
his words are true for those on age’s rim.

At 55 I started getting sore
when I ignored a warm-up. Soon I found
it hard to read in dimness. Premature
Dad’s words were – though his reasoning was sound
it missed – like those attacks on sophomore sense,
when 35’s the age of arrogance.