How I Learned To Do Chair Massages Part 5A

Lots Of Peanut Butter

Sorry, apparently I messed up and didn’t publish this when I should have.

It had been a fairly warm day, and being of the blondy Viking persuasion, I put sun block on in the morning so I wouldn’t burn. But when I took my shower that night, the top of my head was so painful, I had a hard time washing my hair. When I looked in the mirror, the whole top of my head was bright red from sun burn. My hair is so thick I never thought that could happen. 

I wanted to save as much money as I could, so had brought lots of peanut butter and bread and fruit so I wouldn’t have to spend money in a restaurant. But I decided that saving money wasn’t worth freezing my butt off at night and burning my head during the day, so I went to the local dollar store and bought a nice warm throw blanket for seven bucks and a pink “Mesick Mushroom Festival” hat for three.

When I got back to the grounds, several of the vendors I‘d talked to that day wanted a massage. They couldn’t come to me during the day, of course, because they had their own businesses to run. That’s when it dawned on me that my real customers where not the people who came through during the day, but vendors. 

I made more money in the two hours before and after the front gate opened to the public, than I did in the seven hours in between. And the vendors didn’t squawk about my price either. Both the men and the women spend their lives moving heavy boxes, putting up tents, driving for hours from one venue to another, and crawling under their trailers to fix things. For them, ten dollars is a small price to pay to finally get some relief from muscle pains.

And these people know how to have fun! After I got done with the massages that night, they invited me to a bonfire and fed me homemade soup and biscuits and cheesecake. They told me their stories of the road; I told them pet stories from my childhood and the adventures of massage school. And we sat around singing folk songs until I fell asleep on them. When the women learned I’d slept in the car last night because it was too cold to sleep in the tent, they let me borrow tons of blankets and a sleeping bag that was designed to keep me warm in minus twenty degree weather. It even had a cool hood so I could breathe and still keep my head warm.