I was definitely not prepared for the lineup at the chiropractor’s office on Monday morning.
As I gazed around the room filled with middle-aged men like me, it didn’t take long to discover the commonality; the chiropractor confirmed what I had already concluded from my conversations with the veterans in the waiting room.
Every year, Jewish middle-aged married men attempt the equivalent of an Olympic weightlifting record by shlepping boxes of Passover plates, cutlery, pots, you name it, upstairs. Then after only a week of recuperation time, we are required to haul them all back down to storage.
There was a fancy medical term for it, Vertebral Pesachdosis, but it was more commonly known as “Shlepper’s Back.”
In my particular case, Shlepper’s Back just aggravated my underlying condition, first acquired when my wife was in labor with our first child (coincidentally also during Pesach).
Let me explain. There I was, being a good labor coach by assisting her during contractions. In what I can now see was a foreshadowing of the future, I was half-squatting, half-standing when I had this extremely violent sneeze.
I immediately felt this sharp lower back pain, which kept me hunched over for the duration of her labor. By the time we got to the hospital, I was willing to fight her for the painkillers. She won. I have checked with the medical texts and confirmed this as the world’s only registered case of male injury during childbirth.
Sitting around the chiropractor’s waiting room that Monday morning, we fellow shleppers recalled that many years ago, before we had kids, it seemed we had far fewer things to shlep. Or were our backs just stronger then?
We recalled, those of us with memory still intact, that most pots and utensils were just kashered for Pesach. As the years went by and our financial situations improved somewhat, we had bought more things so we and/or our wives would spend less time kashering and more time cooking.
Of course, there was a trade-off. We were just too naive to realize that less kashering meant more shlepping up and down the stairs. And the busier and more populated our households got, the faster the Pesach changeovers became, resulting in more boxes shlepped in a shorter period of time, resulting in severely strained back muscles and legs.
The cure? Lots of bed rest, and no heavy lifting for at least another six months, until it’s time to put up the sukkah, which creates, you guessed it, Vertebral Sukkahdosis. And the cure for that, is six months of no heavy lifting until it’s time to…well, you get the picture.
However, one positive thing has come out of all this. I am proud to announce that we have now formed the founding chapter of the Shlepper’s Club, led and facilitated by our devoted chiropractor.
The male bonding was instantaneous, straight out of the “Iron John” handbook, but without the hugging, wilderness retreats or primal scream therapy.
We have now realized that Jewish male backs are a precious commodity indeed, required for davening (depending on speed and torque), the occasional Torah-lifting at shul, numerous strenuous household tasks such as changing light bulbs, cleaning the garage and workbench, as well as the annual Pesach and Sukkot shleppathons.
As the next course of business, we all resolved to see each other soon, in about, say, six months’ time.
Postscript: With a lot of treatment, my Shlepper’s Back is improving, and I resolve to start my weight training earlier next year. One thing is for certain, though. The next house we buy, it’ll have its own dumb waiter system installed. But until then, it’ll just have to be me.