Here’s the funny thing about school supplies: you can buy your pencils the old-fashioned way, unsharpened.  Or – if you’re a big spender Hey, Big Spender! – you can buy your pencils PRE-sharpened for the low, low price of two dollars MORE than the cost of the old-timey unsharpened pencils.  Ha, ha, ha!  Isn’t that FUNNY??

But I prefer to go cheap or go home and throw some manual labor into the mix for good measure so I bought our pencils UNsharpened, then spent the next two hours sharpening them with a plastic, total crap, “prize box” fish-shaped pencil sharpener. 

Aha!  Two dollars SAVED!  But for some odd reason, my painful ‘tennis elbow’ started actin’ up.  So then I had to go see the chiropractor-who-helps-with-tennis-elbow for the low, low price of FIFTY dollars.  Hmmm.  If I’m being honest here, that DOES smell just a little bass ackwards.  Saving TWO dollars to spend FIFTY??  Maybe, just maybe, I shoulduv PAID the extra two bucks, Chuck, just to have the pencils already SHARPENED! 

But that’s where you come in…ALWAYS with the math.  ENOUGH with the math!  What I really wanted to say is that my trips to the chiropractor seem to turn into some version of Chiropractor Survivor – Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.  Heavy on the “Outlast.”

Every time I’m there, I find myself thinking, “The doctor can only hold my arm in that painful position for so long before I pass out.  And IF I pass out?  Surely he’ll stop.  But until then, I can outlast however long he needs to hold my arm in that painful position by comforting myself with the fact that if I pass out?  Surely he’ll stop.”

While I have never actually tested this theory by passing out, it’s good to have options.  Yes, you have options and stop calling me Shirley!  heh, heh, heh

And in keeping with the painful-to-the-point-of-passing-out chiro appointments, my latest ‘tennis elbow’ visit was no different.  RAT BASTARD PENCIL SHARPENER!!!  Perhaps the kids coulduv sharpened their OWN bleepin’ pencils?!!!  The doctor shot my elbow full of buckshot and sent me out the door. 

Ok, I lied.  It wasn’t buckshot; it was a bunch of BB’s.  And I have the picture to prove it.

When I asked what they REALLY were, he said they were “like medicine.” 

I say they’re “like peppercorns with tape over them.”  But who knows.  So instead, I’m pretending they’re actually radioactive pellets that give me superhuman powers on the tennis court. 

Or at a minimum, they let me live to sharpen another pencil another day.