You know you're getting old when your back goes out more than you do.

My back's been out all week. I didn't even know it was leaving. One morning I woke up and it was gone. I mean the back that I remember. The good back. The one I never think about unless I'm getting ready to lift a keg of beer or a bag of cement. Then I have to remind myself: "Lift with your back. No. Wait. Lift with your arms. No, that's not right. Lift with your hey, honey, come over here for a second and put this into the back of the truck, will ya?"

The good back exists off the radar. I don't even know it's there. It does its job daily with little fanfare. Then, with no explanation, it goes out and the bad back secretly takes its place.

Where the bad back comes from, I don't know. One day I was ambulatory and could proudly stand erect like the King Kamehameha statue on King Street, and the next morning I could barely get out of bed. Standing erect was out of the question. I unfolded slowly. I looked in the mirror and I did not look back. What looked back was some bent-over early species of human, I think he was called Australopithicus. An early semi-erect hominid of some sort, in any case. Or maybe it was Walter Brennan from the old TV show "The Real McCoys," who used to hobble around screeching "The barn's on fire! The barn's on fire!" That was who looked back.

Life is different when you have pain in the back, especially the lower back. Suddenly, half the world is out of reach: the world below your waist. You can't pick up a sock or tie your shoes. You can't pet your dog. You have to wave to him. He thinks you don't like him anymore. You start wondering why scientists haven't been working (behind your back, so to speak) to find the cure to back pain. What have they been doing all this time? After a few days of semi-mobility and pain, you wonder why morphine has not been legalized. Why are doctors keeping that drug under wraps? Why don't they share?

I went to Longs Drugs and discovered I had become part of a large community. There must be thousands of us Cro-Magnons roaming the island. There is an entire aisle of back pain remedies in the drugstore. All kinds of braces and wraps and ointments. Bad backs are an industry. They are propping up a major portion of the country's economy. I bought a chemical "hot pack" for $16. It was so hot it burned the skin on my back. So now my back hurt in two different ways.

I think I'm done here. My Tylenol is wearing off. I've got to wave to my dog and prop myself up in a corner.