I twisted my back. I guess that’s the way to say it. All I know is that when I breathe, the stab between my left shoulder blade and my spinal column will just about send me to my knees.

It started at the indoor water park a few weeks ago. I’m not sure how it happened. I just remember making my way down the lazy river, feeling a twinge, and thinking, “I’m gonna drown in knee-deep water.”

Back aches are the norm these days. I’ve been using the same back for the last 68 years. The only other thing I have that’s been around anywhere near that long is a black and white photo of me holding a beach ball at age four.

Backs wear out. They lose their elasticity. They get stiff.

I watch my grandkids play, and I want to tell them, “Hey dude, your time’s coming.”

It all starts with something like an 80lb bag of concrete mix. At 30, you bend over and lift that bag to your chest. You walk off with it while whistling, or telling a joke to your buddies, or eating a Baby Ruth.

The point is, when a man is young, he never thinks about his back failing him. It never occurs to him that a muscle spasm might make him wish that he’d never been born.

At 40, you start having friends with back problems, which means that you begin to wonder if it could happen to you. But you’re a man. You operate on the principle that real men ignore pain. You pick up that 80lb bag and say to yourself, “Not me.”

At 50, you wish you had paid more attention to how you used your back over the last decade. Your back is sore when you get out of bed in the morning. You stretch. You bend carefully. You learn to squat down and roll that 80lb bag up on top of your thighs before you stand up.

At 60, you start looking at the bag options on the rack at the box store. It occurs to you that the 40lb bags will be easier to tote.

At 68, you get help loading the 40lb bag into a wheelbarrow. You realize that toting 40lbs more than 10 feet without assistance is a dumb idea.

The problem is that the mind is always younger than the body. You know this. The mind doesn’t want to accept the changes the body feels.

When I was in my last few years at Hampton Elementary, we all had gym class with Coach Orr. Coach was a firm believer that every kid should know how to do the basics of tumbling and gymnastics. Forward rolls. Handsprings. Parallel bars. The pummel horse. Rope climbing. Rings. We did it all.

When I was in my fifties and started having my first experiences with back pain, my mind was slow to catch on. You see, my mind was telling me that I was still capable of a forward roll. My mind still thought that I ought to run down to the local gym and give the parallel bars a try.

I think the Good Lord should have wired us with a warning light. Cars have them. “Hey stupid. Your oil pan is about bone dry.”

I guess He knew that we’d just keep driving like nothing’s wrong.

About fourteen years ago, I was helping load a truck at the tree farm. There weren’t that many trees, and they were only 15-gallon size trees. Maybe 50lbs a piece. So, we didn’t use any equipment. We just loaded them by hand.

I had done this maybe thousands of times in my work. I was conscious of how I lifted, but I never hesitated to pitch in and help the guys.

On about the fifth tree, I felt a snap, twang, and a pop in my lower back. I went down on one knee and couldn’t get up. Once I got to where I could breathe without wincing, the guys helped me up. I sat in the office for a while, but eventually, I left early that day. I went home and laid flat on my back for three days.

I got through it. The warning light came on. But as soon as I was able, I just kept on going because my mind said to me, and I’m not lying, “Don’t be a wuss.”

A few months later, a bunch of us were playing volleyball at a church picnic. I remember thinking that there was a lot more stretching and bending in this game than I remember from when I played in gym class with Coach Orr.

The ball was coming my way. A high arch of a lob. It was a few feet to my right. My feet didn’t move fast enough, so my mind told me, “Dive for it.”

Diving was not then, nor is it now in my current skill set. A man in his mid-fifties probably shouldn’t be diving for anything unless he is already lying on the ground, in which case he looks like he dove for it.

Well, I dove and completely missed the ball. I did, however, manage to roll over several times. Witnesses said later that I looked like a fish flopping on the ground.

That was on a Sunday afternoon.

Monday, my back was sore, but not out of commission. The kids were over to the house for a Memorial Day cookout. We played badminton in the front yard. I was moving a little slow, which was another warning light I ignored.

By evening, the pain shooting down my left leg made it impossible for me to stand up, much less walk. I lay on the living room floor motionless. No one was allowed to touch me.

All of this led to my first surgery since I had my appendix out in 5th grade. I had a bulging disc pressing on the nerves on the left side of my spinal column.

It took me six months to get to where I could put on my socks and underwear without sitting on the edge of the bed to support myself. It was a full year before I felt normal again.

Ever since, I have paid close attention to how I treat my back. I continued to load trees at the farm while I was working. I’ll still pick up a bag of concrete mix, a small one, if I need to do that. I’m trying not to be stupid.

But being stupid is not what gets me these days. It’s the everyday stuff that I have to be careful about. I could bend down to tie a shoe and wind up in a back brace for three months. If you call my name and I turn my head, I’m thinking, “Lord, I hope this doesn’t hurt.”

I finally went to my chiropractor twice this week. Although it’s still sore, the old back is much better, thank you.

I have to be ready for my fishing trip in March.

I’d hate to reach into the bucket for a minnow and blow out my back.