Well Played, Dick. Well. Played.

I know it’s cliché, but little things really can make a big impact.

Last week, I was listening to my new favorite podcast...Gilbert Gottfried's interview with Dick Van Dyke. It was colossal as advertised. Beyond the enjoyment I derived from listening to the hosts completely geek out over interviewing him – at his home – I was so entertained by the great stories he shared. The guy is 90 years old -- the same age as the Empire State Building, as he pointed out -- and has spent more than 50 of those years in show business. He’s been a TV star, a movie star, a stage star. He personally knew Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He can sing -- in English and in a horrible cockney accent which he recognizes and embraces as the worst cinematic accent ever. He taught himself to dance when he was in his 30s and despite a diagnosis of arthritis in his 40s, he still dances every single day. A recovering alcoholic, he quit drinking cold turkey in the 1970s. A 50-year smoker (1-2 packs a day at one point), he quit smoking with the help of nicotine gum and patches. Seems like he’s cracked the longevity code – and not just enough to keep a pulse until he was 90 but enough to still be LIVING at 90. Thriving even.

And now he’s written a book called Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths about Aging. I was hoping that he might share some magic (free) nugget of wisdom that would help me crack the code on this aging thing that I've got going on. It’s not that I don’t want to read his book, but my “to read” list is unmanageable right now and I could really use some Cliff Notes at this stage. Toward the end, I realized he wasn't giving anything up other than instructing us to just do what we love and be happy. Just as I was about to add it to my book list, Gottfried asked him to share his most important piece of advice with listeners. I let out a single sardonic snicker at this question because really...if I wrote a book, I sure as hell wouldn’t go around telling everyone the best parts. He graciously answered with this:

“Never start going down the stairs sideways.”

I laughed again as this was clearly a humorous way of saying, "No way in hell I'm giving you the best advice from the book...go out and effing buy it." Except that it did turn out to be the best advice ever. Especially for a runner over the age of 40. After a week of forcing myself to go down the stairs forward – no matter how badly my knees and hips were aching – my hips and knees don’t hurt anymore. I can actually bound up and trot down like I did when I was a kid. It's almost as if using them is preventing me from losing them. And if that's not the best advice in the book, then I want to hear the rest of it too. So I guess it's going on the "to read" list afterall.

Well played, Dick. Well. Played.