Carol’s Column

Every back should have its day ... or seven

STAND tall, stick your chest out and straighten your spine for this is International Back Week, in case you didn't know.

Okay, you're forgiven. I didn't know either until somebody told me.

Mind you, it's difficult to keep up these days. Almost every week is international something week. Heart, housewife, dog, teeth, kids and lawnmowers, they've all had their weeks.

Which I guess, is how it should be.

Meanwhile, back to backs.

There's no doubt that the back has become the most fashionable topic around today. It knocks herpes and AIDS for a loop and has even ousted the dollar, transferring currency, rugby or politics as a main talking point.

A while ago, Time magazine ran a cover story on backs. And the greater part of the magazine was devoted to backache, how to avoid it, what caused it, how to cure it.

Meanwhile, almost everyone I know suffers from backache of one kind or another. In fact, if you haven't got a slipped disc, fibrositis, crumbling vertebrae, or sciatica — you're distinctly non-U.

It seems that International Back Week is being taken very seriously.

There are meetings, keep fit classes, appreciation of body and mind courses.

I decided to go to one of the many back meetings advertised. Called 'Spine Thriller' it was being held in the local scout hall two blocks away.

The hall was crowded. Backs of all age lounged, sat or stood in anticipation.

“So what's wrong with your back, dear?” asked a 90-year-old gentleman on my right. “Twinge, does it?”

Sex

“Only in the mornings,” I admitted.

“Aah,” he grinned, his gums sparkling in the neon lights, “regular sex, that's what I say. It's the best exercise in the world to prevent backache.”

He nodded sagely. “I haven't had a day's backache since I took up sex.” His faded white beard fluttered at half mast and he clicked his false teeth gaily.

“Nonsense,” said the woman beside me, “suspension is what you should go for.”

“Suspension?” I repeated faintly.

“Yes. Hang yourself upside down from a door or tree for an hour every day and think beautiful thoughts.”

The kipper-faced man in front of me was vociferous in his condemnation of sex and suspension. It took a while for him to turn as he was strapped in a back-brace which inhibited his movement.

“Listen,” he said, “it's diet that's important. Eat plenty of lemons and litchis and you'll never suffer from backache.”

A spinal therapist, orthopod, masseur, poet, acupuncturist and neurosurgeon gave in-depth lectures on such esoteric subjects as 'Do YOU know YOUR spine?', 'Every disc has its day' and 'Ode to a vertebrae'.

I went home, my ears ringing with words such as scoliosis, lumbago and kyphosis. Kyphosis sounded so much more dramatic than round shoulders.

I flung it at the kids the next morning. “So stand straight, stop making like question marks,” I shouted, “otherwise you'll get kyphosis!”

“What's kyphosis?” asked Jamie.

“Bad breath of the spine,” answered Ralph immediately.

But you never know when your back may let you down.

Crunching cornflakes, I related the tragic tale of the man who had to be literally cut out of a car only last week.

Passionately

While embracing his girlfriend passionately on the back seat of her Mini, his back went into spasm and he was temporarily paralysed.

Eventually, firemen, called to the rescue, cut open the roof of the Mini — in much the same way as you'd open a tin can, and extricated him — in much the same way as you'd remove an anchovy from its tin.

Naked and locked in position, he was departed to hospital.

As he departed, his girlfriend was heard weeping: “Oh, what shall I tell my husband happened to the car.”

“Do you know what the moral of the story is?” I ask the kids when they'd all picked themselves up off the floor where they'd collapsed in laughter.

“Yes,” said Ralph. “Drive a sports car.”

Happy Back Week to you, too!

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