Beware of Posture Commandos
I am trying to sit very, very straight as I type this. If I do not, trained posture commandos might rappel in through the window and shove a plank down the back of my shirt, which I am heartily opposed to not simply because I fear splinters in my back, but because I like this shirt. You may ask why I am in such a state of heightened posture awareness. For one thing, I am genuinely trying to take better care of myself. More importantly, I am now convinced that my mother has posture control agents stationed throughout the city, and I don’t want to run afoul of any of them.
You may find it unreasonable that I, a 28-year-old husband, father, homeowner, and otherwise responsible adult, would fear my mother and her hawkish pro-posture stance. The problem is, as much as our parents might be looking out for us and proud of our accomplishments and whatever else they stick on those ‘For You, Son, On Your First Gray Hair’ greetings cards, some crucial sector of brain cells fails to let go of the fact that we’re the same individuals who would once choose Crayola over Sherwin Williams as a wall covering any day of the week. And no matter how hard we try to play that responsible adult, eventually, we will slip up and give them ammunition.
I’ve been considering this quite a bit lately, and in some ways it’s my own fault. I used to live in New York, a hundred miles away from any parental units. Even when my mom would come up to visit, she was usually content to hang out and relax for a few hours before it was time to head home. (I was not always so lucky with my college roommates. Two of their mothers visited on the same day one year. They were not happy with the state of our kitchen. No, they were not happy about it at all.) But after five years away, I decided to move back to Philadelphia. And not just Philly, but the very same ZIP code I had grown up in. That was probably worth about a negative million points on the Striking Out on Your Own meter right there. But even then, things were pretty cool, since I wasn’t actually living at home. I could go over, hang out, maybe mooch some cookies, and then get the heck out when the whole Needing My Own Space thing kicked in. And any dysfunction stayed pretty much within the family anyway, so no harm no foul.
Until my big mouth got me in trouble, as it often does. Over the last few months, I’ve been seeing a physical therapist a couple of days a week to try and correct all the mean and nasty things I’ve done to my back and the rest of my body over the years. While this has often resulted in a rather well-built guy named Tim pressing his elbow into my back and leaning on it for all it’s worth, I generally look forward to the experience. Chiefly, it’s because my back does actually tend to feel better after therapy than before therapy, and I’m always a sucker for a service that works as advertised. But those sessions are also one of the few times where I get out of the house and am entirely in the company adults, with no parental responsibilities of my own. So it’s a nice opportunity to socialize, talk about sports, complain about whatever project I’m stuck in the middle of, or otherwise chew the fat. (Some guys go to a sports bar, I go to a physical therapist. Yes, I know I am likely wrong in the head.)
Then I recommended that my mother start seeing Tim, to take care of the mean and nasty things she’s done to her back over the years. Thing is, we can both only make it to Tim’s at the same time. So my socializing-with-adults time has now become hanging-out-with-Mom time. These are very much not the same thing. The first night we were both there, I managed to forget my baseball hat. I later discovered that my mother’s response to this was to sigh and say something like, “Yeah, Dave does that. He leaves things.� From 28-year-old functioning adult to the kid who needs to write his name on the inside of his hat, just like that. And it didn’t get any better. The next week, Tim is finishing his work on me while my mother did her exercises right next to us. After ten or fifteen minutes with the aforementioned elbow, I’m just a bit spent, and the following conversation occurs:
TIM: Yeah, all those spots you were complaining about are definitely worse this week.
DAVE: Why’s that?
TIM: Lotta reasons, some of it’s a postural issue —
MOM: Ah HA! See! I told you!
DAVE: groan
TIM: Sorry, man.
If this is never growing up, you can have Never Never Land. I just wanna be old again.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.