The main part of the brace was hard plastic molded to the shape of my torso from hipbone to collarbone. Mom or Dad tightened the contraption with three Velcro straps beyond my reach. If I got lazy and didn’t first corset myself in an itchy, hot, gauze-like body sock that in theory padded the brace, red sores erupted above my hipbones. Wearing the constricting brace exacerbated and irritated the acne on my back and chest. Piloting my arms through the brace’s designated slots without pinching my armpits was a leveling-up video game I lost more times than not. Twin metal bars rooted at the height of my shoulder blades spindled into a contiguous halo ringing my neck. With the brace on, I moved through the house like a barge in a narrow canal, and getting into bed, finding a sleeping position where the metal halo did not garrote my neck required the patience of a monk and PhD levels of pillow engineering. I’d been wearing this goddamned torture device almost every night for eighteen months, and, as it turned out, it was all for naught. On the same dreary January day the feckless George H. W. Bush was inaugurated, I had a follow-up appointment with my local orthopedic doctor. D-day for me and my sea serpent backbone. The doctor had bad news. While the brace and exercises corrected the issue in my lower spine, the curve in my upper spine had increased a jaw-dropping eight degrees since he’d seen me in September. For context, in the sixth months prior to my September appointment, my degree measurements had held steady. The doctor was at a loss to explain the rapid increase beyond the “you’re still growing” catchall, and he admitted he’d never seen this dramatic a change in such a short span of time. Mom mentioned how exhausted I’d been on Sundays now, as though in explanation (which, in retrospect, it was).

Wait, what are you getting at?