I noticed a local Facebook discussion on pain and its causes just a few days ago, so I thought I’d give you my opinion on pain because, it seems, the older I get, the more experience I have with it.

It’s funny how it can feel so good to finally lay down in bed at night and yet hurt so bad by the early morning hours that I can’t stay there any longer. Even if all other motivation in me to get up and get going in the morning has died, it just plain hurts too bad not to get motivated, get up and do something.

And hey, I know, at the young age of 55, the best of that is yet to come!

One thing of which pain assures me each morning is that I’m still alive. If I ever woke up to painlessness and just felt great, I’d wonder a bit if I were still in this world or not. It is, afterall, a place of pain and suffering to remind us that the here and now is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve wondered, too, about the cause of my pain. Could it be the mattress, like they say on the TV? Well, a change in our mattress did help a lot - Mrs. Griz thinks so too - and especially when I go to bed at night, because the pain used to begin much earlier and make it difficult to sleep. We bought one of those memory-foam mattresses and it was well worth it, but I do worry it’s going to start remembering where I park this 250 pound body and start to be hollowed out like a dugout canoe on my side of the bed.

I expect if I lost 50 or more pounds, the pain in the morning would be much less and I might even be able to sleep in once ina while - it seems such a waste to get up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning when I’ve got nothing scheduled until 10 a.m.

Years ago, when I was about 60 or 70 pounds lighter, I could sleep anywhere and almost anytime. I could even sleep on the living room floor and wake up and still move. If I do that now, my back seems to suffer from the early onset of rigor mortis and I wake up unable to move or get out of the predicament.

It could be, too, that some of my pain comes from my truck-driving years. While a few of the trucks I drove rode like Cadillacs, there were others.

An old cab-over Freightliner I drove for a year or two was like riding a bucking bronco. My seat belt would bruise me around the waste, but if I didn’t wear it, that old bucking truck would throw me off and knock my head against the ceiling - and that was just driving down Interstate 80, crossing the miles and miles of Nebraska.

I remember once coming south on U.S. 81through South Dakota in the middle of the night. I was hauling a bulk load of potatoes from up near Canada and headed for the potato chip factory in Topeka, Kan. There was no traffic at all on the old highway and everything was pitch black. As I drove along, half asleep, with potatoes in tow, I saw a sign which I thought said, “Pavement ends.” Well, before I could even analyze what I thought I saw, the pavement ended. U.S. 81 highway had turned into a bumpy dirt road running on a narrow isthmus between lakes.

I saw white water birds flying up on both sides of my truck as I bounced down the road and slowed to a crawl. I figure they were taking flight for their lives, sure that my bouncing cab and load of potatoes was about to go intothe drink.

Anyway, after a short distance of bouncing and banging my head on the ceiling, the pavement resumed and I was able to help supply the country with enough potato chipsto contribute to our national obesity crisis. Had I ended up in the lake, those gulls would probably have feasted on so many potatoes they would have been unable to fly when the next truck came bouncing down that stretch of road late at night.

I was driving an old International cab-over tractor through St. Peter, Minn., one evening when I had a blowout inside the cab - that’s right, inside. I was bringing it back to the terminal after another driver had jackknifed the tractor and trailer in St. Paul.

Other than a slipping transmission which made me wonder about getting up the hills, things were going pretty good. The old truck had a nice airride seat and was more comfortable to drive than the bucking bronc I often drove, but that all came to an abrupt end when the airbag below my seat exploded and dropped my seat to the floor. I could barely see over the steering wheel and almost felt like I was pulling a bull rack - most of those driversseem to like sitting with their seat lowered to the floor so that only the tops of their cowboy hats can be seen over the steering wheel.

The blowout experience got rid of all the cobwebs which were trying to make their way into my head, and after propping up the seat with a 4 x 4 block, the rest of my ride home was a little less comfortable.

Yes, I do expect some of those old trucks could be contributors to the pain I experience today. I hear that bull and bronc riders have the same problem. I expect, too, deep-seated injuries could have resulted from the times I was thrown off, or at least missed a step somewhere,and fell off my tractor or trailer.

If I recall right, the pain of those experiences let me know then too that the fall hadn’t killed me.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Decatur Herald and the Gentry Courier-Journal. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll @ nwaonline .com.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 07/14/2010