Broken Eggs

The annual Zeringue family crawfish boil comes the Saturday before Easter and this year was no different. The only change was how strong my back felt the morning before. I woke to tiny little stabs of pain in my lower back Friday. For a moment, I thought an old friend had come to visit me. A friend I met when I was sixteen while weilding a 12 pound splitting maul over my head. We used to split chord upon chord of winter firewood growing up and one time I swung too hard. I felt whatever muscle working next to my spine give-up. Like it just said, "Screw it." This was the first time I knew back pain. And I would remember it about once a year ever since.

Sometimes I would wake with the same excrutiating pain from sleeping in an awkward position, or from grabbing something off the top shelf. But it seemed to forget about me in the past few years. This Easter eve morning, I knew it had returned. I loaded an ice chest full of soda and beer with a nice tingling sensation right above my ass.

After we arrived at the boil, I helped purge the crawfish. Bent over at the waist shoving bugs out of the bucket into clean water, we had to be quick. The bastards were angry. Pinching and snapping at flesh, drawing blood at times, we realized these were crawdads from the hood. Their nearly black shells and red accents should have been our first clue - gang colors.

In mid-scoop, I felt it go. That same muscle of ill regards years ago said to hell with me, and gave up again. I wanted to cry. I bit my tongue as I glanced at the toddler playing in the grass who's presence kept me from screaming bloody murder. But I had to be strong. The last thing I wanted to do was show this family I'm about to marry into that I had the spine of an 80-year-old man and I could seriously injure myself just by bending over. I must be strong. Don't let them see you weak. Remember what Patrick Swayze said in Road House, "Pain don't hurt."

I made it for a few more hours until the annual croquet game. I was handed a mallet and damn near had to crawl into the field. Last year's champion may have a slipped disc but I also had a crown to defend.

"Whack!" sent the ball rolling and behind a rain gutter. I hunched after it to wait for my next turn while drinking more beer under the assumption alcohol could numb the pain. It didn't. Every swing at the ball broke me down even more. Finally, I made it next to a tree where I could lean and hopefully rest my bones. I was dragging way behind in the game and could only watch the others from the rear. My only company was a quarter of a beer and a dog named Lucky chained to the tree were I stood. He looked at me with tongue lolling sympathy. So I poured him some beer on the ground like the rappers used to do in the videos. This is for my homey. He lapped at the tepid High Life and looked at me for more. "Here you go, buddy. Looks like it's doing you more good than me."

They called on me to take my turn. I gripped the long handle of the wooden sledgehammer and decided to miss. There were no trees to lean on where I'd be going. The black ball thudded into a root lying atop the ground under the oak and spun back to where it once laid.
"Ha ha ha," said my competition.
"Laugh it up," I thought. This is about as far as I'm going in this game until next year. Besides, this dog still looks thirsty. I found a spot in the tree roots that made a little bowl and I filled it with what was left in the bottle. My future brother-in-law appeared and paid no attention to the buzzing dog. He's a quiet kid, so I offered him a million dollars to take my place. He declined. My turn felt like it was coming faster each time and I took another whack and thought I heard something break. It may have not been my back, but aparrantly your pride sounds the same. What to do? The pain was unbareable now.

"Hey man, want to take a few shots for me, I really gotta shit."
"Sure."
He should have taken the million. I knew there was no way to get me back out there. By this time there was no hiding my condition. I was in the shape of an inverted "L" or maybe one of those less than\greater than symbols depending on which way you were looking at me.

I moaned a bit and bitched a lot for the next few hours. I promised every penny I made for the rest of my life to go to any kind of research there is for back pain. There has to be some kind of stem-cell for that. But as the out-of-date prescription pain killers my future mother-in-law gave me dulled the intensity, it didn't hurt to just lay down anymore and I spent the rest of my Easter just that way.

Even though I was out of commision for a lot of the holiday, I still touched a life this Easter weekend. I heard someone say as I lowered my broken ass into the car that Lucky looked a little different - kinda drunk, even.