What Pulling Your Back Gives You

1) The opportunity to learn new skills, e.g. crawling to the bathroom and peeing, on all fours, into a Breyer's ice cream bucket. This is a new, valuable life skill with many potential applications, all of which I am hoping to avoid.

2) A better understanding of what your clients with "back trouble" are experiencing.

3) A chance to find those trigger points in the gluteus medius and the external hip rotators on yourself. Yes, they are there, and yes, they do hurt.

4) Gratitude for the meds left over from Martha's surgery two years ago.

5) A new understanding of the meaning of "happiness." Happiness, as it turns out, is quite simple: it's what happens when your back is not in spasm.

I stood up just a little bit ago, with no ill consequences. I have informed God that I will never, ever neglect my daily back exercises or short myself on sleep again. He was not impressed. "Oh, I've heard that before," he said.