SPINAL TRAP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-27-19)

      I threw out my back last Thursday, odd since I'm still using it. I spent the next week or so walking hunched over, like I'm trying not to hit my head on an imaginary ceiling. I wish I knew how I did it, so I don't ever do the same thing again. My history says otherwise, though. I blew out my knee once skiing, and as soon as it got better I went back to skiing. And I pulled a tendon playing tennis, and when that healed I went right back to playing tennis. It could be that I blew out my back not taking out the garbage, and when it heals I'll probably go right back to not taking out the garbage. It would be easy if I blew out my back eating Brussels sprouts, because I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that again.

      Whoever designed the human back is an idiot. Did you ever hear anyone say they were having problems with their front? It's as if there were too many teams working on the human body, and no one was talking to each other. At least there should have been a conference call so that all the different project managers could check in. "Why do we need two kidneys? I thought you said this thing was so great it will never fail." "Look I believe in redundancy. What if that goofy gall bladder that Joel is working on affects my kidneys and screws them both up? We need a total of two so another guy can donate one and we're good to go." "Well then what if HIS leftover kidney goes haywire? He's going to go crawling over there with his tail between his legs and ask for it back?" "Joel, are you on this call? I thought we weren't going to go with a tail?"

      I haven't been to the doctor because I'm afraid he'll tell me that I have a compact disc, or a spinal farficature or something even worse that he made up on the spot. Then he's going to tell me I need surgery to extract the remainder of my deductible from my wallet. And you can't believe the number of things I use my back for that I won't be able to do while I'm recovering from the surgery. I use my back for lifting things, for instance. I know you're supposed to use your legs, but they're in worse shape than my back. I use my back for walking, and I use it twice as much if I walk backwards. I also use my back for lying. Actually, that was a lie, so I apologize for that.

      Everyone I know has a cure for a bad back. My friend Liz is a massage therapist, and she suggested massage. I tried that once, and NEVER again. I'm ridiculously ticklish, and as the guy is massaging me, he's going on and on about his Mom, who's in a nursing home and he just got back from visiting her, and I start bursting into hilarious peals of laughter. I had to tip him way more than I should have, plus send a card to his Mom.

      Somebody said I should get an epidural- isn't that the thing you get when you're having a baby? Which I thought was very insulting. You shouldn't just assume that I'm pregnant without asking first. It's not my fault somebody brought a HUGE container of cookies to work and then didn't eat any of them.

      Rex suggested acupuncture, which is a component of health care in China that can be traced back 2,500 years. That's the first time the doctor said to the patient, "Your lumbago hurts? Well I have no idea what a lumbago is, but you'll hardly notice it once I pound this nail into your head with a ball peen hammer." Since then the science has been refined considerably. But what if the guy who does it is more "puncture" than "acu?" Baseball players hit the ball one-third of the time, and then they get voted into the Hall of Fame.

     My friend Lex thinks I should try his inversion table, which is a form of traction designed to decompress the spine, and I might just do that. An "inversion table" sounds to me like something an accountant would use to show me that my gross annual adjusted income divided by my net worth is equal to my accrued liabilities as a factor of inflation when modified by depreciation, and that's why I owe him $500 bucks. By the way, my adjusted annual income really IS gross, you should see the nasty face I make when I catch a glimpse of it. I want to try lying on the inversion table face down, that way my bottom is at the top, my front is in the back, and my inner GPS is recalculating a new route to the doctor's office, without tolls. I picture myself upside down, all the blood rushing to my head where it will do the least amount of good.

     The girls in my band think I should try yoga, they swear by it. I get the feeling that if I tried it I would swear AT it. It sounded great at first- a class of 15 moms wearing spandex, and they think it's so CUTE that a guy as youthful-looking, smart and delightful as I am can't lift both feet into the air. But then that fantasy turned into the reality of a six foot-two uncoordinated idiot slowing down the whole group while I try to explain how I got my watch caught in my hair. "Can you get your dog facing downward a little quicker? I have to pick up my kids at 11." I put my foot in my mouth often enough right here without actually doing it in person trying to do yoga.

      I tried physical therapy a few years ago, and they gave me exercises and stretches to do, and I do them for two minutes every morning while my dog sits on my face. My dog went to his own physical therapist, who told him to sit on somebody's face for two minutes each morning. It doesn't cure anything but it does even up the food chain a little. After two minutes of stretching now I'm six foot-four, so my face isn't where it was two minutes ago and my dog and I both rise to face the day.

     Good news! While I was trying to figure out what I should do, I started to feel better. My back is back! The only downside is now that I've straightened back up, I keep hitting my head on an imaginary ceiling.

PARTY LINES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-20-19)

     My friends Lauren and Tim had a 50th birthday party, and things have definitely changed since I was a kid. My birthday is on Christmas, so I thought Santa Claus was a clown somebody hired for the occasion. I always wondered why everyone else was getting gifts at my party. One thing that hasn't changed over the years is that you had better figure out a way to keep all those kids at the party entertained, or they're going to destroy your house in a matter of minutes. Kids are like termites- if you see one in your house, chances are there are probably more someplace that you can't even see, like under the floorboards. You can get rid of them by using boric acid. I should mention that I'm referring to the termites, I don't think you should try using boric acid on kids. But if it actually worked everyone would have heard about it by now.

     The party was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. They had a couple musicians singing and playing guitar, and that was mainly for adults, because you should not put kids in charge of the music under any circumstances. If you don't believe me look up "Baby Shark" on Youtube. It's hard enough keeping myself out of trouble at my own parties, let alone trying to figure out what to do with the kids. Once I wore a white shirt and black pants, and I was carrying three drinks and somebody I didn't know took two of them and ordered another. I never found out who it was but I did find out that most of my friends are notoriously bad tippers.

     Lauren and Tim didn't take anything for granted. They had a bouncy castle, one of those giant inflatable structures that you usually see on the news as it's bouncing down the street in gale force winds. This one was nailed in pretty good, and it had a basketball court inside. It made me wonder if I could dunk a basketball while bouncing down the street in gale force winds.

     They had two guys rolling Cuban cigars, at least that's what they told everybody. There was a big cloud forming on the pool deck, and it was pretty crowded up there so they were rolling in the aisles. I'm not allowed to smoke cigars, because every time I have one in my hand I start talking like Edward G. Robinson. "Listen, see, one hand washes the other, see, you play ball with me and I'll play ball with you, see, you scratch my back I''ll scratch-" THWACK! That's when my wife slaps me, either thinking that I might be having a hallucination or because she missed an earlier opportunity.

     They had a cotton candy machine in case the youngsters might run out of energy. You take a paper cone and swish it around inside the cotton candy machine, and bingo! You have a big pink swirly web of sugar that looks like a hairdo at the nursing home! Plus it's made of a breathable fabric.

     Then it was time for the piñata! They had a small papier mâché horse, and the idea is that they blindfold you, spin you around, you try to whack it with a stick, and eventually you break four car windows and a knee cap. I don't know how the whole thing got started, but it seems a little like beating a dead horse. I don't want to beat a dead horse if I can help it, and I don't know why I didn't help it when it was still alive. But the main thing I forgot to mention, is that the horse is filled with candy. So little kids were whacking the crap out of this piñata, and nothing was happening. The piñata must have been made of papier mâché reinforced with rebar, and whack as they might, even a big fat kid couldn't bust open this thing. I thought they were going to have to get out a Milwaukee Sawzall and a blowtorch to rescue that candy. Finally the birthday boy grabbed the stick and whacked it so many times I thought we were going to have to call the paramedics. "Yes, over there, the guy with the stick might need oxygen. But while you're here, would you mind opening the chest cavity of that little horse over there??"

     Meanwhile more kids were streaming in, and they were threatening to overrun the catering table. If I was in charge I would have grabbed a whistle and a clipboard and divided the kids into four groups. Okay you kids head over to the piñata, this group is playing "blind man's bluff," this group is going to play tag and the rest of you are doing "pin the tail on the donkey." Already I have a good portion of the children blindfolded, and the rest of the children are hiding from them, and for good reason. Now the traffic near the chicken fingers has subsided, so I parallel park myself over there. I'm always surprised at how big a chicken's fingers are compared to the rest of its body.

     It's obvious to me that Lauren and Tim should be working as consultants on how to keep a million kids busy at your party, so that you can have an adult conversation and not worry that children are going to say things about math or current events that you're not going to understand. It was a win-win situation. We had a great time, and I'm sure everyone left happy and most people took their kids back home with them. But I wouldn't be surprised if they woke up Monday and there was a leftover kid or two in the yard, with a cotton candy and a piñata stick, smoking a Cuban cigar.
 

HAVING A BALL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-13-19)

     Last Saturday we went to the Fred Astaire Dance Studio Showcase Extravaganza at the Somers Middle School, and it was a twirl-wind of activity. There were twists, turns, bumps, grinds and dips, and that was just in the parking lot. Thirty-four students of all ages and sizes danced the night away in well-choreographed two and a half-minute routines to all different types of music, along with their instructors. There were tales of love lost, tales of love found, and tales of love lost and found at the lost and found. There were full costumes: Snow White, Pocahontas, a harem girl, a Spanish senorita- you can dance to just about any fantasy. The professional instructors took it all in sweeping stride, and they didn't seem to mind lifting a student or two that had been off the keto diet for a couple of weeks.

     Ballroom dancing has become a lost art, because there just aren't a lot of balls to go to these days. Back in Cinderella's day, they had a lot of balls, and they had big, long balls. If I had the balls that Cinderella's evil stepmother had I'd never get anything done. To me, the weirdest part of that story is not that you could train mice to pull a pumpkin that turns into a carriage, all of that seems plausible. But who the hell would design footwear made of glass? If they play the "Mexican Hat Dance" there's going to be carnage and bloodshed, many hats ruined, and the handsome prince is going to think you're an idiot.

     Dance lessons are never a bad idea, because I see a lot of couples trying complicated moves on a crowded dance floor, and they're swinging each other around, testing out the laws of physics, and eventually the laws of physics win. These people who think they can just waltz right in and take over the place are in for a rude awakening. So it pays to know what you're doing. Once I saw two fully imbibed lasses trying to tango, and in 30 seconds they had each other in a clove hitch. It takes two to tango, three if neither of them knows how to untie a clove hitch.

     Remember back when I was in the seventh grade? Neither do I, but I do remember that my Mom signed me up for dancing class, thinking that it would make me more poised around adults or something. What it did do was activate my hormones, and all of a sudden my entire endocrine system, which had been sitting around playing cards, finally had something to do. They made the girls wear white gloves, probably to see if us guys had been recently dusted. They should have made them wear full haz-mat suits, because who knows what we were up to right before class? I was probably out working on my mini-bike. I always made a bee-line for Cathy Kummings, who was as tall as I was and I didn't have to bend down to hear her if she said anything when I stepped on her foot. "You smell nice," I offered. Even then I had the gift of human interaction. She replied, "You smell like carburetor parts, but at least ones that have been recently flushed."

     The teacher, Mr. Richard would cascade around the room, one hand in the air holding his imaginary partner's hand, the other on his stomach. He looked like a little teapot, short and stout, there was his handle, there was his spout. When it came time for us to mimic the moves, I couldn't get it right because I was trying to do a cha cha cha cha instead of a cha cha cha. There is a moment when I finish dancing with someone when, flushed with relief, they say, "Wow, that could have been way worse."

     Anyway, the exhibition was really fun, and there were some participants who could really dance. There was one guy with a bunch of tattoos that picked up his instructor and held her aloft like he was about to throw her 20 yards downfield in a perfect spiral. You could feel the joy some of them felt doing things others probably thought they were too old to do. There was a group of young students doing a group routine, and some of them obviously had a lifelong passion ahead of them. My friend Diana danced with her partner to "Circle of Life" from The Lion King. It was a pretty complicated routine, and she performed it beautifully.

     We met with some of the contestants after the show. One had false eyelashes and couldn't wait to get them off. "These things are like windshield wipers," she said. Her real eyelashes were a little upset, and if they had known she wanted windshield wipers, they could have handled the job. Diana was dressed in kind of a feline costume, and I didn't want to get too close because I'm allergic.

     The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter what age you are, what shape you are, what size you are or whether you have two left feet, you can probably dance better than I can. If I could meet up with Cinderella after the ball I have a few questions for her. Like, can you really become princess if a glass slipper happens to fit your foot? If so, that's interesting, because Kate Middleton and I both wear the same shoe size.