Waves of relief washed through a sea of sweat and the load grew as light as a helium heart balloon in a cool breeze.
It’s not a dotard dewlap or dreaded double chin turkey-necking above my collar bones ‒ it’s tech neck.
“Deep, horizontal lines in the neck and double chins are the cosmetic consequences of keeping the head tilted downward for long periods of time,” read the email sent by a New York City plastic surgeon’s PR company. Can’t imagine why it came my way.
“Smartphones, tablets and laptops have transformed the way people communicate and do business, but these tech tools have also given rise to a new physical condition known as ‘tech neck’, and the pain is real,” it said.
It can lead “not only to headaches, neck and shoulder pain, and tingling in the hands, but also deep wrinkles”.
Fortunately, he assures us, there are surgical procedures to fix this, but imagine paying in dollars ‒ NYC dollars at that ‒ for (basically) a neck lift.
On the plus side, you wouldn’t have to keep it secret: you could proudly boast that you worked so hard ‒ literally kept your head down ‒ that you had to be treated for tech neck. Not just older and saggier. Wonder if it would be recognised as being injured on duty.
When counting blessings, my mental meanderings frequently lead to the “what would I do if I had all the money in the world” question to consider what I absolutely need. Nothing, really. Another industrial fan or three and an off-the-grid home, but otherwise, my lot is generally a contented one.
Then “what I’d really like” territory hoves into view. My first wish does involve surgery: I would happily contribute a vast fortune to inventing and surgically (implanting/transplanting/inserting?) pain-free 3D printed spines for anyone who needs one.
Then I would hire the Gardiner Brothers to teach me to tap dance. And learn the Jerusalema. I’d wall-to-wall the biggest hall I could find with tables and dance on top of them all night. Tech neck and bingo wings would vanish. I could vigorously wave without walloping myself in the tech neck.
The doctor does warn of the risks of surgeries and the dangers of letting just anyone have at you with a scalpel: litigious bunch, these ’Mericans, sort of like a former Saffer president. If I’m not mistaken, this was the nation that pioneered the warning on just-poured cups of coffee that this liquid may be hot because someone got slightly scalded. And if it was served cooler, they’d go all Karen on the barista.
It’s also the nation which x-ed enough votes for an orange-dyed deranged charlatan to become their president and spawned an unreasoning right who believes he still is. That should have had a global threat-type hazard warning on it.
And none of their millions of AR15s or similar assault rifles say “it’s the guns, stupid”. The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research organisation which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter, has counted 39 since the start of the year, including three this week which claimed at least 19 lives.
Go figure, as they say. I’ll just keep my dewlap.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday