A Lighter View
Message What!
By K.E.H. Stagg

January 13 , 2011

____There are lots of jobs that sound appealing—at least on a temporary basis: animal keeper at the zoo (until getting chased down and gnawed on by a cheetah); personal shopper (as long as the clients weren’t high-maintenance prima donnas, but then who else could afford a personal shopper?); travel writer (right up until the point where the adventure location turns out not to include toilet paper, let alone indoor plumbing). But the job that has never appealed, even on a momentary basis, is massage therapist.
____Think of it. First of all, in order to be successful, you need fingers that have the strength of titanium combined with the flexibility of India rubber. You have to be able to locate a draped client in low-level lighting without resorting to groping, and you need to have a high tolerance for music that sounds like wind chimes on a never-ending audio loop.
____Then there’s the painful business of the massage itself. There’s nothing I like better than having an hour-long massage, but that’s because I’m not the one hefting a side of beef for sixty minutes. Just imagine how sore your arms would be after a whole day of mangling and pummeling! I have to think the job would be a lot easier with a canvas hoist to rotate the customer from side to side, but that’s not really feasible except in wide open areas like, say, a barn.
____Even worse, pity the poor therapist having to touch physically awkward clients, perhaps with doughy flesh! I can’t imagine grabbing handfuls of fat, trying to reach deep enough to hit muscle, without shuddering or otherwise expressing distaste. Maybe there’s a special class in massage school where potential therapists are trained not to scream, “Yuck!” when they encounter cellulite. We’re talking near-horror here.
____And what if a client shows up with scabies or some other contagious skin disease? Is it permissible to tell a paying customer, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come back when you’re out of quarantine”? Or does the therapist just have to glove up and hose the client down with Lysol once their eyes close?
It always makes me laugh when people talk about massage therapists promoting a peaceful ambience by playing music and having candles lit on every flat surface in the room. ____Hey, go ahead and kid yourself that it’s all about getting calm—I know why the music is going and the candles are burning. I mean, think about it for a sec. We all know what happens when muscles get too relaxed. ____Haven’t we all laughed at the somnolent dog letting one rip? While flatulence may be amusing in animals and small children, it’s got to be anything BUT funny when your face is in the firing zone.
____No, massage therapy was never my dream job. And that’s not even taking into account the stupid jokes about massage parlors!