The back’s out, but count me in

THE day I finally ruined my back, possibly forever, was the morning I tried to race up a hill to beat the exercise class that was huffing along my jogging route. They had started early, as exercise classes are wont to do, up at 5 with their stupid little workout mats. That’s how I finally ruined my back.

“You under any stress?” my chiropractor asks the next day.

“Not really,” I lie.

“You feel tense,” he says.

“That’s because you’re touching me,” I say.

I’d rather not be touched. A lot of touching often leads to marriage, and we all know how that turns out, Bill and Hillary being just one example.

“Your legs, they’re a little uneven,” the chiropractor says.

“I’m prone to walking in circles,” I explain.

The lower back, that’s where it’s hurting, right in that place where I slouch on the couch, where I bend on a bleacher. The lower back, river delta of our worries.

“You’re really tense,” says Joe, my chiropractor.

“You should see me at home,” I say.

It’s amazing a modern dad can walk at all, given all that we do. There’s golf. There’s yard work. There’s moving some new chair from one corner to the next, while the wife stands there with her arms folded, tapping her foot. It all takes a toll. Especially that foot-tapping stuff.

A quick look at my own aching back’s odometer:

* Four baby seats, moved from car to car, over 15 years.

* Three houses painted, including two coats on the eaves.

* 10,000 pop fly balls hit to the boy.

* A dozen Rose Parades, with the little girl perched on my shoulders.

* A hundred trips to the beach (coolers, chairs, first-aid kit, shark repellent, kayak, decompression chamber and several working torpedoes).

That’s a father for you: painter of houses. Mower of lawns. Sherpa of the American suburb.

“What’d he say?” my wife asks when I return from the chiropractor.

“Joe said I have a bad back,” I explain.

“Is it chronic?” she asks.

“Isn’t everything?”

Joe is the chiropractor almost everybody sees. He plays vertebrae the way Dave Brubeck plays piano.

Near as I can tell, his patients are all doing pretty well. But these things take time.

As I leave, he gives me a list of stretches to try at home.

“Step 1: Pelvic Tilt,” says the list.

Being married, I don’t do that much pelvic tilting. It’s a provocative maneuver that leads only to short-term pleasure and long-term children, of which I have plenty.

“Step 2: Lower Back Rotation,” the list says.

Over on the couch, the baby watches with what passes for amusement among babies. He makes the sort of grunting sounds you haven’t heard since the prom.

“Go ahead, laugh,” I tell him. “This will be you in 40 years.”

“Dad?” my older daughter says.

“Huh?”

“Don’t quash his will to live,” she says.

As I do my stretches, the baby and I watch each other in the afternoon light. The baby’s ears are so thin, sunlight filters through them.

They’re like little negligees, his ears. Being a married man, I don’t see that many negligees. Most nights, just a layer or two of flannel.

“Step 6: Single Leg Pull,” I read from the sheet.

Fortunately, there is an incentive for me to get better quickly. Next week, there’s a softball game featuring the youth league coaches. At one time, many of them were athletes of some repute. That time is no longer.

“You still going to play, Dad?” asks the little girl.

“Of course,” I tell her.

“That’s the spirit,” she says.

The kids have it all planned. When the dads square off on the field, the kids plan to coach.

They will coach their dads just the way their dads coach them. Voices like air horns. With little sympathy for mistakes.

A week away, this game. Bets are being made. Old mitts from the ‘70s are being dug from trunks. That’s right, they had leather back then.

“We’ll provide plenty of ice packs,” one of the dads says.

“And police will be standing by,” says another.

“Why?”

“To shoot us if we break a leg,” he says.

Next up, coaches against coaches. A World Series of tired backs.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.