Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2009.

One of the most aggravating things about my painful battle with sciatica is that my back has joined the other side. My left leg is apparently sending to my brain signals like this: “Hey, we’re fine down here, except that maybe we’re a little hairy and pale. Also, your foot stinks.” But when the signal gets to my back, it intercepts it and changes the message to: “Hi, this is your leg, we’re being gnawed on by a beaver. A beaver with a chainsaw. It really HURTS.”

As 12 years’ worth of public school teachers will attest, my brain isn’t very bright, so even though we can plainly see with our own eyes that there is no beaver building a dam out of my shins, it accepts the message from my back and announces, “OK, we’ll crank up the agony and see whether we can make this sucker squeal.”

To counter this cowardly attack, I’ve tried a variety of methods. Lamaze breathing, for example, which turns out to be less than completely effective because, guess what, it’s just breathing. I was already doing that. I shut my eyes, counted, breathed in and out, and noticed absolutely no change whatsoever except that after a couple of hours I delivered a baby.

Me, I’m the baby. I admit it — I’m just not that into pain, you know? I would not be much good on the battlefield.

Commanding Officer: OK, we’re going to storm that hill and take out that machine-gun nest!

Me: You know, I just ... I’m sorry, but that sounds kind of painful. Maybe I should stay behind and just, um, pet kittens or something. I could put smiley stickers on the mortar shells — would that help?

I am far, far better at taking narcotics. Now, the thing about taking painkillers is that you still hurt, but you don’t care.

Legs: We’re being gnawed to pieces by giant beavers.

Me: Really? How cute! Can I pet them?

One downside is that when I’m taking narcotics, I become a little emotional and tend to burst into tears at commercials with puppies in them, postcards with sunsets on them and pretzels with salt on them. Yesterday, I stopped using a sponge because I felt sorry for it. I have a bunch of bananas slowly turning brown — I’m unable to eat one because it would mean breaking up a family.

I also am pretty effusively affectionate with people I care about.

Me: I just want to say, you’ve always been there for me. I ... I really love you, man.

Him: Uh ... would you like paper or plastic?

And I don’t dare drive on the things.

Officer: I pulled you over for driving erratically while listening to Joni Mitchell and sobbing.

Me: Really? That’s so cute. Want a smiley sticker?

As far as work goes, the drugs make me pretty productive with the TV remote. I watched an entire episode of a Spanish language soap opera without understanding a word, though I sobbed through the whole thing anyway. I also ordered a box of Sham-Wows so my sponge would have some friends to play with.

My editor called to discuss my latest column.

“It is sort of a departure from my usual style,” I admitted.

“It’s a drawing of a penguin,” she observed with a disappointing lack of admiration.

“I know. Isn’t it cute?” I asked, dangerously close to crying.

“Perhaps if you wrote some words,” my editor suggested calmly. She’s a professional editor with lots of experience, which is why she can make such incredibly insightful suggestions.

“But I did write words,” I protested.

“You wrote: ‘Eeek. Eeeek.’”

“Right, I wrote them in penguin.”

“We don’t have as many penguin subscribers as you might suppose. Could you try it again in some other language?”

“I really love you,” I told her.

My supply of narcotics is, alas, limited and dwindling. My doctor warned me he would not renew my prescription because I’m not a celebrity. I have mixed feelings about it: I don’t really like being so absolutely worthless, but I do have to admit, it’s kind of nice to feel so loved by an entire family of bananas.

They’re so cute.

(Bruce Cameron has a website at ww.wbrucecameron. com.)

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