Heat Wrap Love

I decided after the misery of my last post, I owed you something relatively amusing. My funniest story I can't tell you because it's library-related, so I new I'd have to pick something else. So I have decided to tell you about my heat wrap.

(I love my heat wrap.)

Almost two weeks ago, I woke up Monday morning to find my spine had, somehow, turned to dust in the night.

I could not remember a creeper coming into my bedroom and stabbing me repeatedly in the spinal column, but clearly that was what had happened. I slithered out of bed onto the floor. The process took fifteen minutes. The process of readying myself for the day was sheer agony. I could not reach down further than my knees, because bending at the waist was impossible. I was forced to grab the heating pad from the foot of my bed (where it stays to keep my toes toasty) and sit on it until the pain abated enough for standing and walking.

That day at work, I tried to spend as much time as possible leaning against walls. That was the only non-painful activity. By the afternoon, I was dying. I slithered home, napped, woke up, took too many ibuprofen, slept some more, and by the next morning I was sure I was already dead.

"You need to go to the doctor," Mom said.

"What would they DO?" I asked. "Nothing is broken. It is a muscle spasm. They will tell me to use a heating pad and to rest. I am doing both of those things."

"Yeah," Mom replied. "You're right."

In the afternoon, the pain from my lower back had spread to include the spot between my shoulder blades. This meant no reaching forward. My arms needed to remain at my sides, so I could flex my shoulders backward, which relieved pain.

I was a walking corpse.

"Why are you so pale?" One coworker asked.

"You should go to a chiropractor," another advised.

What I really wanted was to be suspended from the ceiling by my ankles, so everything spine-related could slide back into place.

Then Mom walked into the library with a CVS bag.

"This is for you," she said. "It is like a heating pad without the cord."

She handed me a box. On the cover was a man wearing what looked like a bandage around his lower back. The bandage appeared to be giving off some kind of radiation.

"Doesn't Michael Jordan do commercials for these things?" I asked.

"No," Mom said. "He does commercials for the name brand ones."

So I took my knock-off heat wrap to the bathroom and fastened it around my lower back. I nearly needed to call in reinforcements.

Within an hour, the hurting had faded. Two hours took even more agony away, and soon I was creaky, but without pain! I could touch my own toes, and I hadn't done that for DAYS. Not only that, I could bend over the circulation desk and check out books. And I could SHELVE! When I got home, I celebrated my pain-free back by putting on socks.


"I love my heat wrap," I told Twitter. "It is like wearing a hug. It is the best invention of all time."

The person who invented the heat wrap should win a Nobel Prize. Seriously.

These things are fantastic. They never get too hot. They are like magic. Everyone should try them. I think they should come with Happy Meals at McDonald's.

What was my life like without the heat wrap? It must have been a cruel, wicked existence filled with lots of pointless suffering. Sort of like life before I was allowed to listen to mainstream music (thanks a lot for those years, Dad). Or life before I was allowed sugar (shudder).

The only sad part is that you can't just live in the heat wrap. It's an eight-hour time limit kind of thing. It might have to do with the muscles around your spine starting to cook after a while, or maybe it's the freaky chemicals they use to make the air warm up the wrap, but who cares? A little cooked-spine and dangerous toxins are a small price to pay for eternal happiness.

I have written several short songs for my heat wrap. But no, I am not going to sing them for you.

I think they will have heat wraps in heaven. I think the reason everyone is so happy in heaven is because there are heat wraps, and. therefore, no more suffering. No one feels pain, because they are nestled in heat wraps all the time. Pillows should be like heat wraps, too.

I love my heat wrap.