a charley horse in the weirdest place

I was lying on my bed last night when I was seized by the urge to yawn and stretch at the same time. It's a perfectly normal urge—one that strikes even cats and dogs and other mammals. So I yawned and I stretched—

—and the muscles right around my navel suddenly went crink! and sent me into a startled, agonized fetal position.

Abdominal charley horse!

It's a bit like when you get a splinter under your pinky fingernail: you don't realize just how crucial a body part is until it's afflicted with pain. With every cough, every sneeze, every motion of my torso, I've been forced to acknowledge just how important my core muscles are. It's almost enough to make me want to join a Pilates class. Almost.

It's evening, now, and the pain is fading. This is a dangerous time, though, because muscles in spasm can be easily induced to re-spasm with just one false move. I'll be cautious about stretching from now on. Yet another thing to be cautious about as I get older.

"It's not the years, honey... it's the mileage."
—Indiana Jones to Marion Ravenwood, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"