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 agonising 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 favourite 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.
Garrison Keillor © 05.19.25
