An inflated sense of youthful resilience.

This past weekend, a co-worker threw her birthday party at Pump It Up Inflatable Party Zone, a favored venue of the under-12 set. It goes without saying that hurling yourself through giant plastic obstacle courses when you're 30+ is a wholly different experience. As you plummet headfirst down the giant inflatable slide, your body reveals its many complex parts with anatomical precision: "Here is your mylohyoid muscle, which is immediately above the digastric muscle which holds the mandible in place--oops! That popping noise is your mandible unhinging." You can literally feel every muscle you never knew existed as one by one, they pop off your skeleton like banjo strings. Not that this stopped anyone from attacking every slide and trampoline boxing ring like second graders on crack. But god, two days later and we're all still paying for it.

Here's the slide where I threw out my back:



Here's my husband, Derrick after compressing his spine: