To spin, or not to spin…

My body is such an over-achiever.  It’s racing full-on towards decrepitude decades before the norm. The good news?  I’m like those Sentinels from X-Men: Days of Future Past – I am able to adapt with every challenge.  My Achilles Tendons ache when I wear 4 inch heels?  Not a problem!  3 inch heels it is!  My neck goes out when I apply a rough plaster finish continuously for  3 hours?  Not a problem!  Rest every 1/2 hour and change hands occasionally – something every teenaged boy learns very early on.

Apparently, my trick shoulder – my Super Spanitus – has been craving a little bit more attention.  I guess that I haven’t given it its due lately.  What with general forgetfulness, also associated with age, I don’t remember doing anything to it.  It’s not like I’ve completely disregarded my physiotherapist’s advice and gone back to 50 push ups before I retire to the boudoir.  I’m not even doing 1 push up.  I haven’t trapped my arm underneath me in bed and then torn the tendons by attempting to slide it up across the mattress without first rolling over to my back in a long time.  I’ve adapted.

And yet – the shoulder has been twingeing – when I reach for something, when I use the back scrubber in the shower.  I recently got a nice, new lift-and-separate bra, and it hurts to do it up.  Thanks to this bra, my girls finally have some vintage-inspired perk, and I can’t put it on.

The last couple of nights, David’s had to help me disrobe.   Poor bugger, I presented my back to him and he became confounded at not having to reach around me to do his 1-SNAP-NAKED move.  I’d thrown off his groove.  Me, relying on him in this way is throwing off my groove.  I was going to have to bite the bullet and invest in front-closure brassieres.  I was bummed.

Last night, at a long-awaited girls’ night, I asked everyone’s opinion about front-closure bras.  On account of the fact that I was going to have to switch to them because of my early decline into decrepitude.  The words had barely left my mouth, when a chorus of  “Why don’t you just spin it?”s echoed through the room.  Little cartoon word bubbles, filled with the phrase appeared over each of my friends’ heads – in differing fonts, depending upon the person.

It never even occurred to me.

Since the age of 11, I’ve been a reach-back gal.  After nearly 3 and a half decades of doing something one way,  to find out there was an alternative?  Revelatory.

It’s akin to learning to knit.  Mom tried to teach me to knit the “Continental” way, and my brain nearly melted.  You know why?  Because knitting, in every North American visual medium, has that thing where you have to wrap the yarn around with one hand.  Even when you mime knitting, you knit one or whatever and then you have to wrap the yarn around the needles.  You don’t just slip it under surreptitiously.  You make a show of it.  Which, frankly, is why I’ve always done my bra up in the back.

“Hey look at me!  Look at my dexterity!  Look how I can make my arms disappear while clothing myself! TA-DAH!!!“

But now… now, I didn’t have to buy any bras!  Not a one.  I just have to put those wee hooks in their wee little eyes in front of me and then spin the sucker…

In our group of 6 women last night.  3 of us were reach-back ers and 3 were spinners.  I found out that two of the spinners tried the reach-back this morning, probably at the same moment that I was attempting my first spin.  Old dogs.  New Tricks.