A Monkey On My Lower Back

The thing I find funny about backs is just how stupidly easy it is to do something to them that really, really, really hurts. Seriously. First time I threw out my back? I was in my late 20s, and I'd just been camping over a holiday weekend. I was packing up my gear, everything had been loaded into the car, and I was bending down to pick up the tarp that the tent had been built on... and I went down, down, down, right onto the tarp.

What the fuck?

Completely out of the blue, that was. I hadn't had any sort of warning pains or soreness, nothing at all. Just bent over, and down I went. Have you ever thrown out your back? Hurts just a little bit. You know, just a little. Like every bone in your spine has been ripped out by evil coked-up Keebler elves and replaced with molten pig iron, and every muscle in your back has been infused with candy corn-sized pieces of broken window glass, which have been pre-coated in a solution of 1/3 parts lemon juice, 1/3 parts corrosive spit from one of those monsters from the Alien movies, and 1/3 parts Sarah Palin bile.

So yeah, just a little uncomfortable.