A Funny Thing Happened While My Spine Was Being Stretched at the Chiropractor's

A few weeks ago, while playing "airplane" with my grandson (now a hefty 23 pound 11 month old) I experienced what can only be classified as a life-changing event.  My body decided to give me a reality check.  You see, I'd been operating under the delusion that I'm still capable of the same physical romping I could manage in my twenties now some 2 decades or so later. Out went the L5 verterbrae and "squish" went the disk that sits between it and the L4.

I've been spending a great deal of quality time at the chiropractor's office since then in an all out effort to avoid back surgery.

Normally, these visits are relaxing, therapeutic and get my day started off on the right track.  (Heck, just being able to walk without wincing has me giddy for joy after this!) Occassionally, however, my time spent on "the rack" or strapped into the spinal decompression device proves quite entertaining thanks to another patient who I'll refer to as Rosco.

Rosco is a wirey old man who splits his time between Prescott Valley and Chandler - Prescott Valley being at a much higher elevation and actually habitable without air conditioning this time of year.  He visits Chandler to golf with his retired buddies and to have his "back snapped" by our mutually shared chiropractor.

Rosco is also a compulsive storyteller.  My personal opinion is that he frequents our chiropractic office for its fine selection of prone and helpless listeners.  There's a captive audience folks, and then there's the kind that's strapped to tables for therapy, incapable of escape.

Fortunately, Rosco's stories are usually quite hysterical.  To date, the best I've heard was the one he shared last Friday.

"So, you know that I bought that place up in Prescott Valley, right?  Well, it's gorgeous.  The wife loves it.  Weather is great, and the view from our back deck goes on for miles."

"There's really only 2 drawbacks to living up there.  No fences and the fact that my only neighbor doesn't want anything to do with me."

"I'm sure it's because I'm an old New York City cop.  That (expletive) is nothing but an old hippy.  Tried inviting him over for barbecue and he made some silly-ass remark about not eating meat."

"Anyway, a few weeks ago I adopted a K-9 from the boyz at the local PD that kept getting car sick.  Gorgeous dog.  He and the missess get along great, and he learned how to fetch the paper like that," Rosco said, snapping his fingers for emphasis.

"Well, last time we came down here, we forgot to lock the dog door before we took off.  When we came back at the end of the day, we found him sitting in the kitchen with a present for us - a dead rabbit.  It was a mess, covered in dirt and just beat to hell."

"I remembered that my hippy next door has an entire cage full of rabbits, and realized that neighborhood relations weren't exactly going to improve any with this."

"Like I said, I'm an old cop.  Old cops tend to fall into old habits when they're under pressure.  I immediately went back into department mode - I developed a cover-up plan."

"I borrowed the wife's shampoo and washed that bunny until it smelled like a field of flowers.  Then I used her hair dryer to fluff him up some."

"As luck would have it, the hippy was out.  So I snuck over, opened the rabbit hutch and placed the dead bunny with his pals."

"All that kinda took the wind outta me, so I decided to have a beer on my back deck and wait for the hippy to get home .  It took about an hour, but he showed up."

"You know, I knew he might be a little upset, but I wasn't expecting the blood curdling scream that I heard about fifteen minutes later.  The guy is only a little younger than me, and I was afraid he was having a stroke or something, so I ran over there."

"I found him standing next to the cage, white as a ghost and shaking like a leaf."

" 'Hey, are you alright?' I asked him." 

"He just stood there, blinking hard.  I thought for sure he was busting an artery somewhere."

"Then he looks at me, points to the dead rabbit and says, 'I buried that rabbit yesterday.'"

"So at that point I had to come clean.  Yeah, I don't think that guy's gonna be coming over for barbecue any time soon...."

And with that, Rosco walked away to his next victim, an unsuspecting homemaker stretching before her adjustment.

I won't venture to guess just how true this account is.  Rosco told the story like a master though.  I laughed so hard they had to reset "the rack" and start my decompression all over again!