{"id":1042,"date":"2017-08-06T11:53:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-06T18:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2017-08-07T10:32:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T17:32:46","slug":"coming-terms-man-girdle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1042","title":{"rendered":"Coming to Terms with My Man-Girdle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019d love to tell you I threw out my back lifting a Buick to save a small child, but I was actually reaching down to tighten a lawn sprinkler head.\u00a0 I was not attempting to lift the full weight of nearly one ounce piece of plastic, mind you, just twisting it tight.\u00a0 This was not the first time I had thrown out my back.\u00a0 I blame it on carrying around a heavy brief case for 20-plus years and throwing my spine off kilter, but deep down, I also harbored the guilt of shoveling down hundreds of pounds of peanut M&Ms over that same period.\u00a0 (Oh, they do go down smooth.)<\/p>\n

The first time I threw out my back was several years ago.\u00a0 I was engaged in the physically challenging act of reaching down to pull a file from a lower cabinet.\u00a0 In any event, a searing, paralyzing pain shot up my spine, and I knew I was in big trouble.\u00a0 Later that day, a chiropractor introduced me to the nirvana of an \u201celastic lumbosacral belt.\u201d\u00a0 This is an eight-inch elastic strip of material that you stretch across your lower back and then secure in front of your belly with Velcro.\u00a0 Instant relief.\u00a0 A gift from God.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where the story takes a cruel twist.\u00a0 The next morning when I\u2019m dressing for work and pulling on my suit pants, I realize I\u2019ve got some extra room.\u00a0 My pants are actually baggy.\u00a0 The belt securing my lower back has coincidentally, and quite delightfully, pulled in my belly and given me a much unearned svelte midsection.\u00a0 \u00a0I moved over to the mirror and turned sideways.\u00a0 A smile crept across my face.<\/p>\n

After a few days, the pain in my back subsided, but out of caution (I told myself), I continued to wear the belt.\u00a0 However, this came to a sudden halt when my wife asked me a few days later, \u201cDo you still need that belt?\u201d\u00a0 This forced me to stop lying to myself.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t putting on a lower back support belt.\u00a0 I was putting on a girdle.\u00a0 A Man-Girdle.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it was time to hang up my beloved belt and face the truth.\u00a0 And it forced me to begin doing what any other guy would do in my position.\u00a0 I immediately went out to my yard and began tightening every sprinkler head I could find \u2013 the ones that needed it, and the ones that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d love to tell you I threw out my back lifting a Buick to save a small child, but I was actually reaching down to tighten a lawn sprinkler head.\u00a0 I was not attempting to lift the full weight of nearly one ounce piece of plastic, mind you, just twisting it tight.\u00a0 This was not […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[632,633,634,631],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-girdle","tag-lumbosacral","tag-lumbosacral-belt","tag-man-girdle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}