Bruce Cameron

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I’m having a lot of pain in my rear end, and not just because I’ve got three kids. It’s because my back hates me. I guess I can’t blame it: Picture how you’d feel if you knew someone who kept steering you over to the couch and sitting on you.

Backbones are constructed in a way that resembles what would happen if you went to the cafeteria at a retirement home, grabbed several plates of lime Jell-O and stacked them on top of each other. The plates are your vertebrae, and the jiggling squares of Jell-O are your discs. In my case, a little of the Jell-O has leaked out,...