Book Bans and Other Health Advice
Finally! It only took about 40 years, but my middle school, smart-ass, TV-obsessed self was right. Reading books can be hazardous to your health!
Park your walkers, friends, and I will lay out my case.
I’m guessing I’m not unique in this, but from about the time the last turkey sandwich was finished on Thanksgiving weekend, I was looking forward to the two-week downtime of the Christmas and New Year’s break.
Here at Resch Strategies, we like to pretend we are back in school around this time of year, mirroring our holiday work schedule with that of any local 7th grader. Of course, we are always “on call” and crack open the laptops more than a few times during the holiday recess. But for the most part, we try to take time to rest, relax, and rejuvenate… kids willing.
This year was no different. No real plans on the calendar for me. My oldest son would be home from his first semester in college. That would be a nice change. But aside from a couple low-key parties and end-of-year lunches, the agenda was light, the commitments few, and the rest and relaxation expectations high. I planned to get some exercise, eat good food, and watch college football (How ’bout them Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers!). Maybe even read a couple books.
And that’s where my Yuletide plans hit the skids and my cautionary tale begins. The book reading. That hidden holiday danger. The toxic spike to the eggnog. The Secret Santa of pain.
Some might argue in defense of book reading that my 51-year-old body played a leading role in my dramatic recitation of The 12 Days of Ice and Ibuprofen, but stay with me. I have a doctor’s note.
My holiday recess began as planned. A lovely lunch here, a friendly neighborhood party there. The boy was home, and our family of four was back intact. I enjoyed a couple of great workouts in a completely empty gym thanks to all the lazy S.O.B.s who apparently prefer to spend Christmas Eve doing something other than deadlifts. And Christmas Day was a joy. Aside from the traditional Lansing-area brown-gray Christmas featuring dead grass, mud, and clouds, the gifts were thoughtful, the food amazing and the company well-behaved—minus a nasty case of the “6-7s” my son brought home from college. (It’s not just a middle school thing, apparently.)
Then the page turned to the excruciating.
While the days post-Christmas, with their fleeting minutes of daylight and multiple hours of inactivity, began to merge into one, I’m clear that it was Saturday when I started to push things just a bit too far. After a walk with the dog, I tempted fate, grabbed a book, and—wait for it—sat on the couch. Some six or so hours later, a number of chapters into an excellent examination of the story of the Titanic, I stood up, not knowing a silent sneak attack had been launched.
Sunday came and went—a little stiff, a little more reading, a little more couch. (Spoiler alert: the ship sinks.)
And then, come Monday a.m., my body wouldn’t move. It felt like Titanic had rammed its bow directly into my lower back at an attempted world record-breaking speed of 22.5 knots.
And speaking of knots, the entire middle section of my body was tied up in them.
What had I done? I hadn’t lifted anything weird. No shoveling. Slept fine. No one had attacked me from behind with a fireplace poker.
It was a painful, ice-applied, ibuprofen-fueled mystery. A mystery that left me irritable and insufferable. It’s one thing to have nothing planned on your own terms. But tell me I can’t move, that I need to take it easy because of some freak old-man injury, and I won’t have it—and I take this moment to apologize to my wife and family for the holiday cheer I brought to the entire situation.
The second week of my “break” involved leaky ice bags, heating pads, drugs, and whining.
I thought I was on the mend until I bent down to pick something up and my back posted to X: Nope, you’re done, loser. #oldman #loser
I tried to “tough it out” through a few workouts like I had always been able to do with back tweaks of the past. Once, I got to the parking lot of the gym and couldn’t get out of the car, as the kids would say, literally. Another time, I thought I was on the mend until I bent down to pick something up and my back posted to X: Nope, you’re done, loser. #oldman #loser
Finally, back to work on Monday came with some relief. I wasn’t 100 percent, but the bright lights on the heating pad control were starting to fade.
I decided to make an appointment with the chiropractor less for an adjustment and more for some answers. The sarcastic beauty of social media is that when you plug “lower back pain” into ChatGPT, your Facebook and Instagram feeds become a snake-oil Costco of medical devices, gadgets, therapies, and diagnoses.
“So, hit a little bump in the road, did we?” the doctor started.
A bump in the road! Could that have done it?
“It’s been a week,” I said, “and I’m just going to talk,” launching into a thorough reporting of every physical movement I’d made since the second week of Advent.
He nodded along kindly. Knowingly. He’d been here before.
“So, given all that, I think I have a herniated disc,” I concluded. “At least that’s what the pictures on Instagram seem to be telling me. Should I be using one of those hip hooks?”
He smiled. “You’re feeling better, right? And the pain isn’t moving around your body?”
“Right,” I said.
He proceeded to rule out the more scary online prognoses—at least for now—and settled on a muscle strain.
“But what did I do?” I asked. “How did I strain it, because I never want to do it again?”
“My guess,” he said, “it was reading that book on the couch. Your body is used to moving. You move all day long. Then, you didn’t move. And slouched. For a long time. That will do it.”
“Reading! I knew it!” I said.
“Well, maybe just get up every hour or so and walk around next time,” he counseled.
“Books are dangerous. I hear you.”
And so, my 2025 holiday takeaway: It’s not about a Dry or Digital Detox January. It’s those sneaky books and their cushy couch accomplices waging a shadowy war on the lower backs of innocent people just looking for a week or two of holiday rest.
I tell you, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. And I’ll probably have to ice that, too.