My chiropractor must be writing a novel. Every time I’m in the middle of explaining why my back is out this time, his muse suddenly interrupts, he grabs his notebook and mumbles, “My publisher won’t believe this one, either.”

I don’t begrudge him his hobby but it seems rude. Maybe my injuries are so routine he just gets bored.

I was right in the middle of how I was all drill sergeant nose-to-snout with a snorting steer when Dr. Dan suddenly lost interest in my chart and began scribbling furiously.

“Wait, tell me again! And then you did WHAT?”

If he’d been listening to me instead of snickering at some joke he must have just remembered, he wouldn’t have had to ask me to repeat it. Four times.
Anyway, as I told him, it started last Tuesday when I got wrapped up in a book. I skipped exercises and for two days flopped across the furniture engrossed in reading.

Dr. Dan asked, “What was the book?”

“‘The Hardcore Diaries’ by Mick Foley.”

“Mick Foley? The professional wrestler?”

“Yes.”

“Let me get this straight – you hurt yourself reading about a guy who gets whacked in the head with steel chairs, smashed into burning tables and hurled off 16-foot-high cages? Just READING about it?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. Perhaps if you weren’t writing so much, you’d hear me the first time.”

Anyway, a couple days later I hobbled off to my brother’s farm for a bonfire. The drive there had my back screaming in agony, but I made it. He had told me there would be s’mores.

My nephew has a steer he plans to show at the county fair, so my brother began bragging on me about how good I was back in the day at taming rambunctious cattle. I was the dude!

So there I was, my spine askew like a mild question mark. There he was, Cactus Holstein, the feisty steer, ready to rumble. And there were all the nieces and nephews, waiting to see if the “hardcore legend” was for real or just another 10-mile walk to school through 5 feet of snow in bare feet.

I had no choice. Baby, I wrestled the steer.

I dragged Cactus when he dug in his hooves. I body-blocked him when he charged. When Cactus tried to plow ahead, I clamped up hard with fist on halter and forearm braced under his muzzle as I ’splained the facts of life through clenched teeth.

I may be nearly 50 and gray, but I still have it! Soon Cactus and I were walking side by side like old pals.

It was a victory for all mankind. I fought the steer and I won!

Until I tried to get out of bed the next morning. I couldn’t get up. So I gritted through a painful roll until I went over the edge and crashed to the floor, and…

“Wait, back up,” Dr. Dan said. “Thirty years after you last wrestled cattle, with a back injured by reading a book, you thought it would be a good idea to …”

He shook his head and set aside the notebook.

“Never mind. If the Bonecrunch Journal didn’t believe the one about the green beans, the frog and the dental floss, they won’t buy this one either.”

That’s funny. His plot line for the novel sounds like one of the times I threw out my back. How odd.