Thirty years ago I sustained minor injuries trying to break up a fight. I walked into the living room to see my step-brother about to take a swing on my dad. I grabbed him and jerked him backwards. For a 22-year-old female, I was pretty strong (I frequently helped out with shipping 50-pound boxes at work and had horses, with the mucking and shucking and whatnots.) My own force surprised me in the shape of a doorknob entering my back. That squishy part between your hips and ribs.

Yeah there, that squeezy smoosh.

For decades thereafter I’d “throw out” my back but only doing the most mundane things. Like sneezing.

When Google entered the world, I looked it up in an effort to understand – and hopefully prevent – future episodes that left me like a turtle facing certain death immobile on an open highway, belly up.

Your body remembers such violations as a doorknob splitting fibers, and it attempts to protect you by clenching up, prepared for impact. The lightning bolt of pain, muscles banding together like a shield, refusing to stand down for days because there’s always a high risk of a second sneeze.

Huh. Makes sense.

So today, while I’m suffering a frozen upper right quadrant, struggling to drink my coffee because my neck and shoulder have refused to participate in anything resembling normal operations, I consider what injury I could have ever sustained that my body felt it needed to protect me. While I slept.

Dishes. Boyfriend cooked dinner last night, and per the rules of social etiquette, it was my responsibility to clean up.

Lifting plates to the faucet stream and green scrubbying pasta remnants from the large boiling pot. The wide sweeping gesture to wipe down tables and counters. Heaving and lifting the garbage bag to lug outside. My body has determined these behaviors pose serious risk to my musculoskeletal system and – by attempting such dangerous chores – I have triggered an involuntary protective response.

I’m not a doctor. But the science seems pretty clear.

I can no longer do dishes.