Exactly the way it sounds.

“My butt … hurts.”

And I have no idea what the cause is. I don’t think it’s hemorrhoids. It may be some sort of bursitis.

For all I know, I broke my butt.

“Yeah, cracked it right down the middle.”

Actually, yes, that’s where it hurts.

“But honey,” my wife pleads with me, “go to the doctor, and let’s figure out what this is.”

“Um, doc, I don’t know how to say it, but it’s my butt, and it hurts.”

What I think happened: I was lifting weights at the gym three weeks ago, doing a seated military press. I squiggled ever so slightly while hoisting up the weight, and bam, felt a twinge.

“So, go to the doctor …”

“And what, have them do all these tests, spend thousands of dollars on tests, and find out that I sprained my ass?”

Because that’s what they’d probably tell me.

I don’t see this killing me or anything. I mean, hurts like hell to sit, and you don’t realize how much you sit in a day until you’ve got an injured ass.

All day long, it feels like somebody is cleaving my rumpus with a butcher knife.

It hurts worse when I try to get up. As if said butcher knife is digging for gold.

Yeah.

But like I said, I doubt that it kills me. I can only imagine those conversations in heaven (assuming, you know …).

“So, what did you in?”

“I was a soldier. I died defending our country. Was shot in action twice, went back for a third tour, and got hit by an IED. You?”

“A pain in the ass.”

Every teacher I had from fourth grade on is laughing right now at how karma is a bitch.

How we got there …

Well, for starters, we weren’t unhappy with Comcast/Xfinity until the past couple of weeks, though actually we could’ve been unhappy customers dating back a little while. Ever since the company changed its on-screen menu, about a month ago or so, we’ve had problems with the TV service – screen freezes being one issue, another, bigger issue being the inability for us to access on-demand TV.

We finally broke down last week and scheduled a tech service call, and when the guy knocked on the door and asked the problem we were experiencing on his way in, we could tell something was up. The issue that we were experiencing was something common to customers in Waynesboro, we were told, and unfortunately there wasn’t much we could do about it because Comcast still hadn’t figured out the issue.

OK, we decided, life goes on. And then on a whim on Sunday night I decided that I needed to order WrestleMania 28 on pay-per-view, which turned out to be a big mistake, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We ordered the show at 6 p.m., an hour before the scheduled start time of 7 p.m., and at the appointed hour turned on the channel and expected to begin watching ‘rasslin.

Except that the show didn’t come on. Around 7:05 p.m. we got the idea to call customer service to see what was up. It was around 7:57 p.m. that we finally got a live person, who told me that despite what I had been told on the phone at 6 and what my TV screen was telling me, namely, that my order for the pay-per-view event had been processed, in fact the order had not been processed.

I at this point inquired about the process for a refund, since I’d already missed the first hour of the show, and was told that I could request one after getting my bill, but nothing was guaranteed.

Faced with the option of paying full freight for a part of an event at this point, i canceled the order, which I still expect to be billed for.

So in sum, I ordered the event an hour early, waited an hour on the phone when it didn’t show up, was told that basically there was no reason the show shouldn’t have been on my TV as scheduled except for a technical issue on Comcast’s end, and was told that I might be able to get a refund, might not, but I could request one.

This story has a happy ending. We called Lumos, a local cable and Internet provider, and a tech from there will be out later this week to install cable and Internet service at a savings of about $80 a month from what we were paying with Comcast/Xfinity.

I will never, ever do business with Comcast/Xfinity again, incidentally, but you could have already guessed that. And it’s not because of the tech issues, which are entirely forgivable. The shoddy customer service is not at all forgivable.

All of us in business want to get it right the first time. When something happens and we fall short of that mark, it’s incumbent that we make it right on the comeback. And when we fall short there, shame on us.

The common refrain: He/she just up and said that he/she doesn’t want to be married anymore.

Um, OK. I don’t want to be an old fuddy-duddy here, but … that’s it?

I hate to say that I wish that there were affairs going on to push things or something in the way of irreconciliable differences.

Just not wanting to be married anymore – that’s sad.

We had close friends married the same day we got hitched – Oct. 7, 2000. They’ve been split for a couple of years now.

Another couple whose wedding we attended on the walkup to our own that year – ditto.

Another that we met three years ago who have one kid and another on the way – Splitsville.

Thing is, they’re all great people. Which is what makes it so difficult. We’re not talking people who got married when they were too young and grew apart as they grew up. (Like my parents, teens when they had me and early 30s when they broke apart.) We’re talking nice people, professionals, college-educated, et cetera.

Is it something in the water? (I’m going back to an all-fizzy-product drink diet just in case.)

Seriously, I don’t get it, and I don’t want to get it.

I love my wife more today than the day we got married. I am absolutely certain that I am a better man for her saying yes to my marriage proposal and consenting to spending the rest of her life with me.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go kiss her madly to show her how much she means to me.

“How?”

“Um, well, everybody was talking about us.”

“But they’re done talking now.”

“Yeah, but when they were talking, you know …”

“It was about how we were way, way off on when the world was coming to an end.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“What if the world comes to an end tomorrow? We’d have been off a couple of weeks. Not bad considering the span of world history.”

“But …”

“I get it. We were just pulling this out of our asses. That’s not the point. Point is, everybody was talking about us.”

“To make fun of us.”

“And what’s the old saying about I don’t care what you write about me as long as you say my name right?”

“Overrated saying. Nobody spelled our names wrong. D-O-O-F-U-S-E-S isn’t that hard to spell.”

“I swear I thought the world was going to end.”

“Seriously?”

“I had a premonition. I’ve been wrong before. Whatever.”

“So this wasn’t really about getting publicity?”

“No.”

“So the stuff about everybody talking about us …”

“I’m just trying to find a silver lining here. I can’t believe I got it wrong again.”

“I don’t know which is worse. That you really believed that the world was going to come to an end, or that you didn’t plan for the possibility that it wasn’t.”

“So … we all have more liquidity now than we did six months ago. What’s so bad about that?”

“A tornado hits, and it all vanishes into the sky.”

“What’s the chance of a tornado …”

“What’s the chance the world is going to come to an end because we say it’s going to come to an end?”

“Good point.”

“Honestly, I don’t remember saying anything about Obama being born … I mean, who cares where he was born? What I can’t get over is … he actually requested his birth certificate because I said something about where he was born?”

“Seriously, I said I had investigators looking into that? That’s pretty good. Investigators? And you bought that? A sucker born every minute.”

“I was bored. That TV show isn’t doing much for me anymore. OK, yeah, even I couldn’t afford to buy that much prime time. And did I mention how much I love the sound of my voice? You’re fired! Gives me goosebumps, and I’m The Friggin’ Donald! Even so. Been there, done that. On to bigger things.”

“I was only dicking around about running for president. Until Obama – can you believe he actually requested his birth certificate because of something that I said? That’s just unbelievable. I might have to run for president now just to see what else I can get him to do. Hey, Barack, I’ve got investigators looking into whether or not you actually went to Harvard. I’m hearing that your transcripts are … missing. Ba-hahahaha!”

“I’ve got another one. Hey, Barack, I’m hearing that you’re really not a Muslim, that your father wasn’t even from Kenya. I’ve got people looking into it. Why in the hell would you fake being from Kenya?”

“You kidding me? Run for president? One, I have to disclose my financials. No way I’m doing that. Two, what do they pay you to be president? A couple hundred thousand a year? I don’t get out of bed to take a shit for less than two hundred thou. Three, it’s my understanding that … wait a minute. Obama really requested his birth certificate because of me? I am Da Man!”

“Remember when Obama supposedly made that three-pointer on that campaign visit to troops back in ’08? I have it on good authority that his right foot was on the line. I’ve got a million of these. Bada bing.”

“OK, OK, I admit it. It really is one hair wrapped around and around. It’s about 12 feet long when you straighten it out. All the money in the frickin’ world, and I’m a chrome dome!”

“Are these for you?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Um, OK.”

Awkward exchange at a shoe store in Charlottesville recently when I came across a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors for sale in a color that I don’t have yet.

Yep, pink.

It was the second such awkward exchange with a shoe sales clerk over my interest in pink hightops.

I get it, in a sense, and what I get I don’t like.

The first clerk went into a soliloquy about how she hoped her boyfriend never asked her for pink shoes.

How do you respond to something like that?

“Um, you know, I’m heterosexual.”

As if that would matter one way or the other.

(Not, as Jerry and George said once on “Seinfeld,” that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Gay, straight, whatever – I just want pink Chuck Taylor hightops in my size.

I like pink. I wore a pink dress shirt yesterday. I’ve worn a pink hat for a photo in a YMCA promotional photo. (And kept the hat.)

The bad news: no pink Chucks at the store that I visited last week.

But there was a pair in my wife’s size at another store that we stopped at a couple of months back.

(We weren’t accosted there when I asked about size-13s.)

Crystal wore her pair one workday this week, just for me.

(I was so-o-o-o jealous.)

(OK, their commercials annoy me. I’m just glad Febru-any-any is only 28 days.)

It’s not the commercials that have kept me away for months. It’s the way the submakers use whatever dirty knife is laying around to cut my sub into two before wrapping it up.

I don’t like mayo, don’t like vinegar, don’t like anything on my subs except lettuce and tomato, salt and pepper.

So when I order my sub – turkey, ham, sometimes chicken – with lettuce and tomato, salt and pepper, what makes it seem logical to anybody that I’d want the knife that just cut up the sub in front of me that had everything in the store in terms of add-ons to touch my sub?

And yet … without fail, the last several times I’ve gone to Subway that’s exactly what’s happened.

And yes, i can easily just request, Hey, you know, could you please use a clean knife?

A couple of the times that I’ve done that my request has been met with sneers and then a blank stare – as if I’m being a difficult customer or something.

And maybe I am. Maybe it’s par for the course these days that you shouldn’t expect to get it your way, especially if “your way” means “clean and sanitary.”

Either way, I gave up a few months ago.

Not exactly what you want to hear from your new dentist when he’s taking his first gander into your mouth.

“Let me clarify. That’s a good Wow!” he added after a pause.

Phew!

My assumption that my teeth were rotting out of my head: wrong.

I hadn’t been to the dentist in (gasp!) 20 years – since my senior year of high school.

There was no real reason behind it, no plan, no seething hatred of and intense desire to undermine the dental industry or anything.

“You have perfect teeth.”

That’s pretty much been the thing for me.

Blessed, I am, I know. No braces, no cavities. Just a lengthy record of checkups and cleanings.

The biggest thing for me with the first visit in 20 years was filling out the paperwork.

“I hate bureaucracies,” I texted my wife, who had told me to get to the dentist’s office at 11 and had me fill out the paperwork before I got there.

The half-hour that I spent on the paperwork, it turns out, was something that the people at the dentist’s office had built into my schedule for arriving there. Meaning I had a half-hour to kill in the waiting room.

Good news: I had my BlackBerry with me, so I didn’t have to read the six-year-old Ladies Home Journals in the lobby.

(I read people’s mindless meanderings on Twitter instead. Not sure that was much better, but …)

There was some pain in the hygienist’s chair. Even having perfect teeth, you can have some serious tartar buildup in 20 years between dentist’s visits.

“You’re such a good patient,” the hygienist said in the midst of an hour of scraping my teeth with one of a number of sharp picks that I will be having bad dreams about for the next couple of weeks.

And I’ve got to go back.

“Sorry, but your gums are bleeding so bad in a couple of spots that we’re going to need to get back in there after they heal up,” I was told.

Really, I was bleeding? I had no idea, until I looked at the bib that she had put on me to catch the drool falling out of my mouth.

It looked like the set of a slasher movie. With me as the pretty teenage girl wearing a tight sweater. Or something.

“Sorry. But … you’re such a good patient.”

It can wait another 20 years, can’t it?

Today we made contact – sorta, kinda.

“I saw your twin today,” my wife said upon returning home for lunch.

She didn’t see him up close, but she was convinced from across the street that it was me walking down toward the Heritage Museum.

Which she thought odd, because I had just IM’d her about having lunch at the home office.

“But I was convinced it was you,” she said, describing how the person she saw walking down the street had a shaved head, was tall, muscular, “and was wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and …”

Dramatic pause.

“A sweater vest.”

I’ve long held the theory that I was separated at birth from my real family – a teacher mom and doctor dad – who wondered how in the hell they ended up with a son who builds dragsters and drinks PBR.

(My family – both sides – is full of crazy people. And they won’t be offended to see me say that here. They know.)

Love ‘em for raisin’ me, but I pine for my real folks, if only just to say hi, how ya doin’, sorry the nurses gave you the wrong kid at the hospital, et cetera.

This twin guy – maybe he’s my connection.

O, Brother, Where Art Thou?

It’s been a rite of spring and summer for me lately. Basically for the past four years I’ve taken a student in the spring and summer ostensibly to guide along the career path and blah blah blah.

(Actually, they’re there to do grunt work. And somehow that helps them grow as people. Hey, I don’t write the rules, I just live by them.)

All female – apparently not nearly as many guys go into the sports-politics-media-marketing-PR field. Two high-schoolers, who of course made me feel old. Two college kids. And the latest, Kim, who is a grad student, and I can’t figure this out, but even as we’ve moved our way up the age ladder, she makes me look … old.

“Did you know that JJ Redick put out a hip-hop CD?” she asked me the other day.

No, I didn’t. They still put out hip-hop CDs? I mean, seriously, I just got my first MP3 player a couple of weeks ago – and yes, what I got was an MP3 player, not an iPod, because I’m not only not an early adapter, but I’m cheap.

Kim went to my old high school. (Doing some quick math, she was 3 when I graduated.) A couple of my former teachers were there when she matriculated. (One taught my mom. Mr. Bryan, dude, you’re ancient!)

She’s studying sports management at JMU now, so her intern work is under the auspices of the Waynesboro Generals summer baseball team.

Her goal is to be the GM of a professional sports team or a college athletics director.

“She’s going to be your boss one day,” my good friend Eli chided me.

Probably so. One thing that my experiences with interns does for me is it gives me a fresh perspective on what it is I thought way back when that I wanted to be doing with my life when I got … you know, old.

The good news is that I’m still young enough to keep in touch with that part of me – and spry enough to want to effort at making things happen.

And yeah, I know, me using the word spry dates me a bit. I get it. More than I get JJ Redick making a hip-hop CD.