Shoulders

We were going to dig up dinosaurs.

We were going to hammer away rock and sediment, sand and grime to unearth something more calcified from millennia of stone. We were going to heave the lump of rock and bone, store it away for safekeeping until the tiny pieces of history could be chiseled away and lifted from captivity. We were going to hunch over miniscule vertebrae, to brush away eons of sedimentary cover up. We were going to crave this labor of love, anticipating the ache of work-worn muscles and sunburned skin sprouting freckles overnight.

But we were wrecked.

Ten years ago, a large black SUV backed into our mother’s van while she was driving on a residential road in the town where our family went to church. The SUV T-boned our side of the car, and as we were launched in the opposite direction our seat belt tightened. Our right collar bone snapped.

Eight years ago, we were getting off the bus outside of the library where we worked, hauling our backpack along with us. One particularly large chemistry textbook residing in the pit of our bag weighed just a little too much. That time, we heard our right clavicle crack.

Five years ago, we began working at a local restaurant. Twelve hour shifts of hauling towering stacks of plates, massive pans of Midwestern comfort food, and enormous boxes of frozen goods drained us of our strength. We were heavily strained, and were prescribed a sling and three months of physical therapy. We disregarded the sling.

Three years ago we began to study film. We were made to lift eighty pound light kits and balance fifty pound cameras on top of ourselves, exerting us to the point of tearing. This time, we didn’t bother going to the doctor. It seemed pointless to us.

A decade, multiple breaks, muscle tears and other injuries later and we are almost out of commission. We’ll never huddle over the exposed fossil of an extinct creature, protecting it from the wind-tossed sand. We’ll never help others heave enormous femurs of out the sediment, straining against the weight of a bone that supported a ten-ton reptile. Were we to do that, we would be done for.