I, uh. Oh, dear GOD.

So we spent this Sunday at my 'rents place, helping them winterize. Yard stuff in the shed, limbs trimmed and stacked, firewood moved, furniture re-arranged and vacuumed under...the works. In the process, my step-gator dragged me down to their finished basement to show me her newest purchase.

Now, as much as I love the step-gator, she's a sucker for "miracle cures." Her back has been bothering her, and we've gone through massages, chiropractors, orthopods, etc.  She'd strap a mongoose to her back and wear weasels in her pants if she was promised that it would make her lumbar spine feel better.

A few weeks back, while she and the Da' were at a street fair, they came across a vendor selling what were described to me as "these fabulous chairs that float and take away your back pain altogether!" She was most serious when she told me that all she needed to do was sit in the chair for about ten minutes at a pop, and her lower back pain melted away.  "Of course," she said, "it takes a bit of getting used to, but it really does help. It's a suspension-y sort of thing -- you just hang there kid of weightless...your dad put it up in the basement. He attached it to one of the joists, and I can sit in it and watch my shows!"

She went on to describe it's construction, but I admit that I was tired and sore and only paying perfunctory attention, nodding in all the right places as I followed her down the stairs to be confronted by one of these hanging from the rafters.

That's right. My mom and dad basically bought and installed a fuck swing in their basement.

I just about swallowed my teeth. Worse, I was subjected to my mom (whom I adore, but she is rather Emperor-penguin-shaped) clamber into the contraption and explain how all the straps for your knees and ankles work to help support you and make you weightless.

As she was hanging there, and I was trying to not cry/laugh until I peed myself, the husband came down and did a visible double-take. I shot him a "shut the holy fuck up and don't say a word or I will gut you like a God damned fish" look, and helped her disentangle herself. She then, generously, offered to help ME into the device, because it "really would make your back feel better!"

Husband assumed the biggest, most shit-eating grin I have ever seen on a human and concurred that I ought to give it a go. I demurred.

I swear to God I am going to track down that vendor and strangle him with one of his own products.

In memorial.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

-- John Donne 

Rest well, William. The world is a lesser place in your absence.