summer knees

The banged up knees children get when playing outside in shorts and dresses that don’t protect their knees from cuts and abrasions. It’s a wonderful phase for I absolving parents of the guilty from inevitable summer injuries.

Example: “How did Leroy cut his knee?” (With the suggested guilt implied of weren’t you watching him and why haven’t you bandaged it yet?)
Parent response: “Oh, he just has summer knees.”

Excellent phrase for free-range parents to know.

sarcopenia

Sarcopenia is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass (0.5–1% loss per year after the age of 50), quality, and strength associated with aging.1 Sarcopenia is a component of the frailty syndrome.

As he aged his strength continued to decline, most likely due to sarcopenia.