Sunday afternoon alone in the airport
The Column: 05.19.25
I’ve often thought that we Midwesterners are the most compliant people on Earth, trusting to the point of accepting insult with a smile, and I thought so again on Sunday when I got the most painful massage of my entire long life. It was at a spa at the airport; I had two hours before my flight, so I signed up for a half hour and lay on a table for sheer bare-knuckle torture. It was deep to the point of being invasive. He may as well have been walking on me with hobnail boots. If I’d had nuclear secrets, I’d have handed them over, the formula for winning lottery numbers, the whereabouts of Amelia Earhart, the origins of the universe, but I lay there not saying a word, not even “Pardon me but could you not attempt to rearrange my bone structure?”
Having been brought up evangelical, I thought maybe this was payment for some transgression but couldn’t think of one except that I’d accidentally taken Jenny’s suitcase instead of my own and so she had to go to a drugstore and buy toothpaste and a toothbrush and borrow clean underwear from her sister. And then the guy bent my right arm back behind my back so hard it made me squeak, and because I need my right arm to sign checks and shake hands, I got off the bed. I did not say, “That was an agonizing massage and I’m going to report you for abuse of the elderly.” I said, “I have to catch my flight.”
I could hardly turn my head. My back hurt. I couldn’t walk straight. I will say this for myself: I did not give the man a tip. I do not reward vicious cruelty.
Where does this wimpiness come from? I’d like to blame my parents who brought us up not to complain, but they were children of the Depression when everyone was living on the edge.
No, I think that, like many people from flat terrain, I simply grew up with a strong sense of my own insignificance that has lasted into my 80s. I lay there under painful punishment for 25 minutes. A New Yorker would have jumped up after 90 seconds and called 911 and filed charges of assault.
I once lost a truckload of money on a real estate scam that I won’t tell you about because you’d only say, “How could a grown person buy into something so obvious? If you’d asked a lawyer, he’d have said ‘Are you kidding?’ and charged you 59 cents for the advice.” If I told you, you’d inform my wife that I need to be put under guardianship and all my PIN numbers taken away.
It’s not blind trust so much as “Who am I to imagine I’m so important that anyone would bother to cheat me?”
And so the good Christian people of the Heartland went ahead and elected the most corrupt and contemptuous president in our 250-year history. Unlike Nixon, he does it openly and boasts about it. He’s the man who never told a joke or made fun of himself or petted a dog or put his arm around a friend who wasn’t bought and paid for.
Hillary Clinton was a good candidate but she lacked a favorite sport and if she had bowled and hit a strike and leaped in the air, and screamed, “Yes!” she’d have won Wisconsin and the White House and we would’ve been spared DeeJay in the yellow pants, but never mind.
Despite my dumb mistakes, I believe in progress. I once put up for five years with a shower knob so calibrated that by turning it an eighth inch you went from Arctic waterfall to fiery brimstone. You had to stand under the showerhead to adjust the knob, not knowing if you’d perish by ice or by fire. But eventually a plumber replaced it. Life goes on. The sun comes up and the sun sets and the Mississippi runs into the Gulf and you can call it whatever you like, it’s the same Gulf. This evening I banged my head on a cupboard door, which I’ve done before and surely will again.
Flannery O’Connor said, “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.” I did a radio show for forty years based on the world I grew up in, which is gone, and now I’m grateful for life itself, its significance yet to be determined.
Make your summer sweeter by planning to see Garrison Keillor at one of his live shows! You’ll sing, you’ll laugh, you’ll make new friends.
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Re: "people of the Heartland". Sunday's NYT Opinion section featured a focus groups of Dems discussing Dump. One of the most dispiriting observations came from a 66-year-old Missourian mail carrier, who described herself as "one of ten Democrats" in her county. She'd asked her co-workers why they voted for Dump, and said "They can’t give you a reason why. Voting Republican is just what their family does." As a lifelong member of the opposing party which is sooo hyper-critical of its candidates I was both aghast and unsurprised. Any Dem I know can give you at least a couple of reasons for their support or lack thereof for a politician. None of which would include "I don't know. I just like/dislike them." We've GOT to get civics back into the curriculum, folks. My late father taught it. Citizens have responsibilities!
I'm surprised that there are no other Keillor readers up and about yet, but I'm willing to be the first. I think a bad massage is a particular cruelty in a class by itself. There is always a bit of trepidation about signing up for a massage but that's mostly overridden by the sweet anticipation of how good it's going to feel. Then, when it not only does not feel good, but hurts and actually implants the hurt to last long after rising from the table, it brings something that should never accompany massage: anger or irritation or some other negative reaction. One wonders if your airport massager was actually one of thump-musk's fired air traffic controllers taking out his/her frustrations on your runway, so to speak.
Your column left me wondering what would have happened if you had told the masseur/masseuse/massager that it was a bad massage. I also wonder what goes on in the mind of a massager when the body on the table is old or flabby or really flabby or wrinkled or has moles or lumps or growths or warts or any kind of anomalies, etc. I'm not speaking of you, Mr. Keillor, but just in general; I know nothing of your "landscape!" It is just an uncertainty that kind of bothers me: do doctors, massagers, dentists, and others of that type have to grit their teeth, grin and bear it, when faced with a body that they would rather not see? If the subject comes up, they'll usually say something like "oh, we've seen it all..." but insecurity raises the question: "have they really? have they ever seen moles like the ones on this shoulder or lumps like these? And will they recoil when they are revealed? Will they suppress the horrified gasp and look away?! Will they try to make things better with a shabby compliment, "that's a mighty fine mole you have there...."
Well, have a good day, Keillor readers. Try to avoid the thump storm troopers roaming the countryside looking for some corpus to habeas.