ancient chinese secret

Today I accompanied my hubby to his first ever acupuncture appointment. For as long as I've known him he's had pain in his lower back. He believes it all started when he became his own shock absorber - his run down bicycle was his only form of transportation until he got his driver's license at 30. I theorize his pain comes from carrying around his incredibly long torso and trying to cram himself into a world designed for the average height man (5' 9.2").

Though I have always thought of myself as short - it crosses my mind as I am climbing grocery store shelves like a monkey, sometimes being forced to leave behind the product I wanted because it remained out of reach and it was packaged in glass (too risky for more drastic maneuvers) - the Internet tells me I am .2" above the average height for a woman (which is apparently 5' 3.8"). I like to think of myself as above average - I test well and I always got good grades - but this is really rocking my world because, Internet, I am so not tall. I am still digesting the fact that I am one full quarter inch shorter than my seal friend (the recently skinny one whose pants I wore for wisdom when talking to the crazy cat lady), and she is quite short. I so refused to believe I was shorter that I insisted we find a taller person to measure us. The record of my defeat is marked on the wall behind a photo of Ree Ree, this year's first harbor seal pup.

Anyway, back to the acupuncture. My hubby, who does not believe in hormones, allergies, chemotherapy, sugar substitutes or Santa Claus, believes in acupuncture but he distrusts chiropractors. Frankly, I don't think they are the brightest bunch either, the chiropractors, but this stems from my work at the newspaper where I discovered someone once told them the most effective form of advertising is a flyer, single sided and always on goldenrod paper, crowded with way too much text, usually testimonials from clients and the story of their path to chiropracty, none of it spell checked, all framing a small grainy photo of themselves looking creepy with children or dorky with their parents. Seriously, chiropractors, if your friends jumped off a bridge...? So they are not the most free thinking bunch, I guess, but they do have neat tools like that machine that gently shocks your muscles into flexing themselves. I want one of those for mischief if nothing else.

But again I digress. So while the acupuncturist identified and addressed his problem (his right side is all bunched up and tight to compensate for his angry left side, leaving his legs not exactly the same height causing more stress on the left and right sides...), even she suggested he should see a chiropractor.

I'm interested to see how he will digest this information. I've seen his paradigm shift before. After all, his five states of America used to include California, Texas, Florida, New York and "the M state" and now they are California, Texas, Florida, New York and Chicago. But this could be difficult for him.