Welcome to the club, Jim!

Retired BJ reporter Jim Carney has joined the fastest-growing club in America: People with store-bought knees.

Carney had his left knee replaced with the man-made version in the Crystal Clinic area of St. Thomas in Akron.

Wife Katie Byard, still a BJ reporter, wrote: “He'll be here until Wednesday or Thursday, and then will go on his acrobatic tour. That actually will have to wait three weeks or so while he is using a walker.”

Although the first knee arthroplasty wasn’t performed till 1968, there are 719,000 such procedures during in America every year. By 2030 it’s expected to rise to 3.4 million annually!

I had mind done a half-dozen years ago. It’s tricky getting in and out of cars and into those cramped concert and theater seats and it gets stiff if you don’t flex it every 10 or 15 minutes, but it sure beats the pain of the human knee gone wrong.