At a dance lesson last week, my teacher, April noticed something funky with my shoulders—one was a little bit higher than the other. I’m not talking about Igorish “yes-master” hunchbackedness, but something slighter (and, thank heaven, fixable).

April stood me up against the back wall, told me to make a right angle at the elbow with each of my arms, and put the back of my hands flat against the wall, with pinky fingers also touching the wall. My task was then to keep my heels, back, and hands against the wall while raising my arms to touch my fingers above my head. I couldn’t even get the back of my hand and pinkies to touch at the same time, never mind all the rest. I performed ten repetitions of this exercise and felt a little defeated. I felt as though I had been lifting heavy objects when, in fact, I had only been lifting my own arms.

April then showed me how, in a relaxed stance, my shoulders tend to roll forward so that my palms face a bit forward,instead of to the side. Office worker syndrome, she called it. The solution: strengthen my back. Specifically—do this exercise about 10 billion times. Groan! What did I ever do to earn a Kinesiologist for a teacher? (Something very good or very bad, I’m not sure which.)

I’ve been doing this exercise whenever I have a chance. I’m a little bashful about doing it at work, but I’ve done it between dance classes and a few times around the house. I’ve got to fix this back because, you see, I’ve always been the girl with good posture.

Up until this class, I thought I DID have good posture. I’ve been dancing since I was 6 or 7, so posture has always been on my radar. And as long as I can remember, I’ve had adults (sometimes complete strangers) pull me aside to compliment me on my posture. It even happened once last year when I was demonstrating for Craig at local ballroom class for seniors. A kindly old lady in the audience exclaimed, quite loudly in a my-hearing-aid-needs-a-new-battery voice, “What lovely posture.” Everyone has been telling me it was good for so long I just took it for granted, I guess. And now I’ve been working at an office job for too long and I have shoulders to fix.

I’m on rep 101. Only 9,999,999,899 to go.