My knees crack. I think it’s a genetic thing because my entire family’s joints crack. 99 percent of the joint cracking occurs when someone stands up from the couch, which is fairly often because we all enjoy laziness and snacking. Sometimes the cracking is accompanied with a wince. Especially my mother, who, upon standing, sometimes contorts her face and mutters, “Goddammit…” i don’t know if her joint pain is that severe or she has a shitty pain tolerance. Either way, it’s kinda funny, which it shouldn’t be, but it kinda is. Usually, then, she goes limping after a stray Twizzler Nib that has fallen from her grasp. Which is why I have no empathy for her in this situation and giggle.

My knees have always cracked, but never they hurt. Years ago, when I had earned a free personal training session (earned by signing a gym contract…after having a liquid lunch), my knee kept cracking whenever he asked me to do anything, like lunging or walking. Crack. He had a look of concern and asked, “Does that hurt?” I shook my head no and deepened the lunge. Crack. In hindsight, there might have been pain, but I was still drunk from the previous night’s gin and champagne drinking (that’s a whole other story of poor choices) that ended a few hours before this free (!) personal training session. In another hindsight, that personal trainer had other looks of concern, like when I kept losing my balance while lunging or walking.

But that was years ago. Now my knees hurt when they crack. Now I work out regularly, my knees hurt. Only recently, when I stand up from the couch after deciding I should take a break from Netflix and eat more mini candy bars from the freezer, my knees crack with pain. Somewhat like my mom yet not at all, I hold the kneecap over to the right, I learned this from a friend’s sister, and say, “Fuck!”  Sometimes the yanking of the kneecap helps, but usually it simply produces a more pronounced fuck.

My knees, enjoying a Mexican vacation.

But that was days ago. Since then, I’ve googled ‘why do my knees hurt’ (when I typed in why,  ‘why does my cat..’ and a variety of choices automatically appeared. I need a job.) and learned that stretching, lots of stretching, as well working out the smaller inner thigh muscles will help with knee pain. So I did. Feels great! That right knee is back in business, but now my left knee hurts…Jesus, this has become one of those stories you start to tell a friend, you mean for it to be short, but then you think of all these great little details, so you tell those and then your friend loses interest, you feel like a dick, you lose all confidence as a storyteller, you give up and you never even get to the funny part…goddammit. So the stupid funny part is my left knee hurt after a run today so my solution was to keep jamming my finger into this weird spongy part on the front of the kneecap even though it hurt, but felt so weird. So now it really hurts…(jam). Fuck!