A Wishnack Back

at this stage i know i will limp and hobble permanently when i'm old. my only hope is that it will be a charming limp, and not some sort of wretched quasimodo stumble.

"how old are you?" my co-worker asked.

"i'm twenty-six," i responded, already knowing what he was about to say.

"twenty-six?!" he laughed, "i'm double your age and you don't see me complaining about my back!"

"well," i said, "thank you for highlighting the unfairness of the genetic handouts."

my tangled spine is about as doomed and pathetic as a game of jenga with michael j. fox. and it is not an example of a youngster whining.

i was told when i was eleven that this would happen. my dad was already doing the majority of his activities in a lawn chair. the doctors told me my spine would twist and my hips would tilt and my whole body was fucked from the start. they put things in my shoes to slow it all down-- but, early on, it was my destiny to be a bent man.


i wish at least my spine glowed when it hurt. that would be pretty neat.
last week, crawling out of bed was about as easy as explaining transsexuals to a six year-old. i collapsed while trying to put my pants on, and if i hadn't received an EMERGENCY text from work, i would've called out.

i also would've explained transsexuals in the blink of an eye if i had a choice between the two.

i've mentioned back-issues before, but things were worse than they ever have been. i had to call a cab just to make it to work. and during the length of time it took my broken self to wince down the stairs, the cab had given up on waiting.

"he can't do deliveries today," my boss explained, "he has a bad back."

"i thought you were eighteen?"

"i'm twenty-six," i said, "but thank you."

"wow," they responded, "twenty-six? and a bad back already... good luck with your forties."

i don't think anyone quite understood how bad things were that week. and too many adults were anxious to explain that i was too young to be bitching about my back-- that i don't know anything yet. and, in comparison to me-at-50, i probably don't know anything about bad backs. but compared to them-at-50, i find i may be an expert.

it was a classic case of unnecessary competition-- like when you tell a friend you've only had four hours of sleep and they feel it important to tell you they only had one hour. and then, for some reason, you find your own mouth saying, "well, i had four hours. but the night before, i had none. so i was even more tired."

the whole thing is stupid. my back is not a competition, it's just a failure. and i don't need fifty year-olds talking shit on top of it.

i couldn't lift my legs higher than three inches off the ground without my hip giving out. and i had to move so carefully-- holding my breath and doing a sort of forward-moonwalk, while keeping most of my weight on my left leg.

all i want, is to be spider-man. and last week was a real dream-shatterer. but, if nothing else, it reassured me that the doctors were right [for once]. i will have a very useless back when i'm old. it's going to happen. it's already started.

so, here's praying my future-limp will at least be a real cool gangsta-like limp.