It happened around 5 p.m., which feels like the universal time for the body to stage a protest.
I bent down to pick up something I dropped (a pen, which my knees clearly thought wasn’t worth the risk), and I heard a crack so loud it sounded like a tree spirit snapping a branch in anger. This was more than the snap, crackle, and pop that provides the Rice Krispies soundtrack for my knee activity.
Then — the pain.
Not enough to kill me. Just enough to deflate my afternoon a bit. It was going to be an Aleve kinda day.