eptivity

Can we just talk about how my newly formed and wholly consuming love for the chiropractic arts?

I’m one of those people—please tell me it’s not just me—who manage to hurt themselves in the most ridiculously mundane ways possible. Not the ones who contract rare subtropical diseases when stranded in remote areas after parachute malfunctions, or even those who go quietly in their sleep after long and moderately happy lives in the suburbs.

I’m referring to the ones who stub a toe one day and die of a raging case of the gangrene.

The ones who have never broken a bone, as far as we know, but have managed to severely sprain an ankle just walking around the house, dislocate a knee (requiring a leg brace, crutches, surgery, and weeks of physical therapy) while putting on their pants, and throw out the upper back (not lower back, mind, like a normal person) for no discernible reason.

After approximately 24 hours of inexplicable back pain right between the shoulder blades that prevented me from reaching, twisting, sneezing, laughing, or turning over in bed without wincing, I had my first chiropractic adjustment ever this afternoon, and I feel 87 percent better.

Of course walking into the village and back twice today, first for consultation and then for treatment, was not the most fun I’ve ever had—did I mention that we got another 3 inches of (now melted) snow over the weekend?—but the painless, relaxing, inexpensive, chemical-free, noninvasive, immediate relief was well worth it.

Oh, and also the part where the chiropractor told me that taller people have a greater tendency to slouch because, contrary to popular belief, slouching is not caused solely by being a bad person, but also by a little something we like to call gravity.

So there you go, my mom and also Cenaida: my admittedly poor posture by which you are a) deeply disappointed and publicly shamed, or b) made to feel better about yourself, is only almost entirely my fault.