My knee hurts. Fiery daggers shoot through it whenever I step down wrong, try to cross my legs or squat to retrieve what Pussy (not her real name) has batted under the couch. Since I, unlike millions of other working Americans, have health insurance, I saw a doctor.

My doc sent me to an orthopedist who sent me to a physical therapist who could see me the next week across town around the corner from Trader Joe’s through the courtyard and up a flight of stairs into the house that Jack built.

The PT was an athletic thirty-something guy who shook my hand in a warm, friendly grip. “I’m Peter,” he said. “Let’s have a look.” Peter was low-key, all business, focused on my knee and the maypole of muscles, tendons and ligaments attached to it. He took me into an apparatus-filled gym that looked like a doggie agility course. “Step up, bend, crouch, lunge,” Peter instructed. “Close your eyes and balance on your left foot.”

I steadied myself, breathed, struggled to stay upright.

Back in the exam room he had me lie on the table, roll onto my left side, then right, then face down, then on my back. He maneuvered my leg and measured its strength, range of motion, flexion, extension, barometric pressure. “Squeeze. Resist. Push. Lift.”

“Keep your shoulders and feet on the mat and arch your back into a bridge.” Peter instructed. “Hold.” While he timed my endurance in this position he asked, “So what do you write?”

I’d listed writing as my occupation on the intake form—yet another attempt to invoke the publishing goddesses. “Oh,” I grunted, straining to keep my back arched, “It’s just a little humor column.” Best to start out humble. Not everyone recognizes me from my photo in the paper.

“In Eugene Weekly?” Peter was still watching his timer.

Holding myself arched made it hard to chat, but, given the topic, I managed. “Yep.”

“What’s it about?” A standard question.

Hmmm, do I come out now? I’m in pain and vulnerable and at this guy’s mercy. How exposed do I need to be? I played it safe. “This week it’s on menopause.”

“Oh, right,” Peter chuckled, his warm hand resting on my throbbing knee. “My wife and I read that and laughed our asses off.”

Speaking of which, my ass was seriously aching from holding the arched position. Finally, Peter had me sit up. He jotted some notes in my chart and rolled close on his wheeled stool. Turns out, Peter explained in clinical terms, that my behind is behind my knee problem. De butt bone connected to de knee bone, who knew? My tush, although ample, is too weak to do its job of supporting my knee.

Peter sent me home with a stretchy band and some exercises to strengthen my glutes—minimus and maximus.

This’ll be fun. I can’t wait to hear how he and his wife like reading the saga of turning my lazy keister into buns of steel.

Award-winning writer Sally Sheklow works on her bottom line in Eugene, Oregon.