Lois Krogmeier thought she was high-class, but that was just a lie–the truth is, she was born a dirt-poor simpleton who got lucky by marrying a dirt-rich millionaire farmer’s son. The boisterous lout with a bowling-ball figure, now flush with corn and soybean money, was ready to crash upper society and join the other high-class snoots who snooted around Pickney with their noses pinned high to the Nebraska sky.
She paid admittance to thee exclusive Mercer County Country Club & Fairgrounds, slow to pick up golf, mostly whining about her bad back that “flares up worse when I’m rattlin’ around in that cramped little golf car'' while her playing partners were trying to putt. This was followed by Lois calling a vacillating member of the foursome off the green with an uncouth and intrusive, “-------, woncha be a dear and give it a quick kneadin’?” The involuntary rubdown, with ------- caught in the headlights, was always followed by a curt and pretentious, “well dear, that certainly didn't help much!” as she rattled off to the next tee box, wincing in pain like a bad actor.
While divoting up the fairwanes, as Lois called them, playing a game meant for quiet, she megaphoned nonstop about her brand-new Lincoln Contimental, the “ginuwine four-karen diamond ring Melvin just bought me!” and her top-of-the-line everythings, all the while whiffing the English language as much as she did her little dimpled ball. After only three weeks, “Snoot'' Krogmeier (who club members likened to an August grasshopper) got her admittance refunded, “because we care about your chronic physicality, and choose not to aggravate it further,” the letter with a refund check stapled to it lied.
Unfazed and without a clue, Lois next joined thee hoity-toity Pickney Ladies’ Go Big Red Bridge Society, slow to pick up bridge; mostly whining about her bad back that “flares up worse after a game or two of cards,'' while everyone else were trying to take tricks. The usual sequence of events followed like a queen follows a jack: a player caught off-guard during a random shuffle with, “-------, woncha be a dear and give it a quick kneadin'?” followed by a curt and pretentious, “well dear, that certainly didn't help much!” followed by a blatantly piqued rearrangement of her cards and spine.
Lois, a square peg gone pentagonal, soon wore out her welcome around the card table with her blathering oafishness–either whining about her bad back, or typhooning about her brand-new, 27-inch consoldcolored-tv, microway oven, or the “ginuwine enrolled necklace Melvin just bought me!” The bridge players cringed and ridiculed the hypochondriac foghorn just as the golfers cringed and ridiculed her.
One evening after tromboning an unnerving, “you have my deepest symphonies, dear,” to her partner whose second cousin had died the week before, it was game over, bridge burned. Lois was refunded her membership dues, “due to the Pickney Ladies’ Go Big Red Bridge Society disbanding, but we loved having you as a member,” they lied–twice.
Because the country club and bridge society were the only snooty places in town, Lois went back to shopping for her top-of-the-line everthings and whining about her bad back to everyone else–mostly to husband Melvin, who was goat-roped every night into giving his wife a half-hour, full-body, kneading because her bad back “flares up worse after a night of colored-tv watchin’, stretched out on the couch a couple hours.” As sure as harvest follows planting, her sore-handed spouse got rebuffed every night afterwards with a sharp “well dear, that certainly didn't help much—good night, anyways!” followed by a sharp clap! clap! to turn off the lights, followed by her ghostly sniveling groans as she slipped between the sheets like there were tacks tucked inside the mattress pad.
As the seasons rolled by, Melvin’s hands were not the only ones recruited in town to do her bidding–every worshiper after church, every shopper and bagboy in the Pickney IGA, every rollered, hair-sprayed hen at the beauty shop were subjected to Lois’ spontaneous imposition of a quick kneading–seeking the attention, psychosomatic pity, and control she felt her money and bad back demanded.
One year, in the week after Christmas, anyone within earshot was subjected to a blizzard of self-importance when she grandly snooted, “You’ll never guess what Melvin bought me—a one-year gift tercificate to Oh, Mei! Massage inside Grand Island’s new Imperial Malt!!!”
The folks in church, at the grocery store and beauty shop were secretly thrilled–no more awkward, grit-the-teeth touching of “Snoot'' Krogmieir's ‘bad back’ whenever it “flared up worse after sitting through an hour on a wooden pew”; or while “pushin’ your shopping car made for taller folks'' through IGA’s six short aisles; or “while bein’ scrunched under a hair dryer made for midgets.” Her brazen request was always followed by the well-worn, curt and pretentious, “well, that certainly didn't help much!” as she made a red-carpet exit towards the “new Lincoln Contimental Melvin bought me!!”
After her gift tercificate expired after fifty-two essential oil massages and acnepuncture treatments, Lois snooted to the specialist, “well dear, that certainly didn't help much! This place should be called Oh Mei! You’re No Help!” and threatened to contact the Better Business Bureau before sashaying out of Imperial Malt with her nose pinned high to the skylights. Lois was back in her husband’s hands, which got sorer and stiffer with arthritis and carpal tunnel due to all the unappreciated, unreciprocated, late-night palpitations that he had kneaded out over the years.
As minutes ticked into decades, Lois’s bad back whining got worse; Melvin’s hands did likewise. He sent her to a chiropractor, but she didn’t like “playin’ Twister with a bone doctor”; physical therapy, “too much work,”; an oralpedic surgeon, who’s x-rays revealed a spine as straight as I-80.
The Christmas when Lois was 75 was special–Melvin, hoping he might finally be retired as her reluctant personal masseuse after 57 strenuous years, surprised his wife that morning with a top-of-the-line, tricked-out, Cloud Ten massage chair that included underneath its padded faux-leather upholstery, six individual massage mechanisms designed to work together to perform therapeutic relief to her entire body, a superior spinal decompression apparatus, a toes-to-neck roller, and sixty-six pressurized airbags located throughout to gently knead away the tension from her self-described sighing new mantra, ‘my decrepend old, worn-out body.” He dollied it in from the garage, placed it next to the tree, plugged it in, and invited her to enjoy a relaxing, leisurely mechanical massage, with his now permanently bent fingers crossed.
Lois crawled in gingerly with her bad back flarin’ up, arrowed down to Gentle Body Treatment, set the timer, and got a $17,000 deep-penetrating kneading, ouching all the way.
Twenty minutes later, she crawled back out, whining that her bad back felt worse and would probably bruise now too, stood up ‘woozy’, faked a partial collapse, and snooted to the chair, “well dear, that certainly didn't help much!” then limped off in a double-time snit to find a cane–and one not of the peppermint-type hanging from the tree.
Melvin, cautiously giddy just twenty minutes before, rolled his eyes, miffed that after shelling out all that money for a massage chair–a top-of-the-line bag for her bowling ball body, Lois was still complaining about her bad back. Back to hand-kneading later. Thanks for nothing, Cloud Zero.
Silent night, holy night rolled around, and after watching a Hallmark Channel weeper on her 85” black-paneled tv stretched out on the couch, Lois knew what she needed. Melvin knew too, but instead of following her up the stairs to bed dreading tonight’s thirty minute tactile walkabout, he herded her back to the Cloud Ten. “Just give it one more chance before I take it back tomorrow,” he begged, hoping and praying that she would give his weakened, stiffened hands tonight off, like even the rancorous Scrooge gave to poor, overworked, underappreciated Cratchit.
“Oh, why not, Melvin, dear," she whined to the star on the tree like he had just asked her to fly to the moon, struggling and complaining trying to get comfortable inside the cockpit. “After all it is Christmas, and I guess I can give you one kneadin’ night off, even if it means I’ll probably be thrashin’ in back pain all night long,” she sighed, channeling the benevolent side of Mr. Scrooge.
Melvin secretly hurrahed, arrowed down to Full-Force Massage, and set the timer; then changed the channel to the Bulls game and began limbering up his stiff falanges. At least he had time to finish out the first half before it and Ebeneezer Snoot’s time ran out–and she started complaining about her goddamn imagined bad back again for the ten millionth goddamn time.
“My bad back can’t be relieved with all that sportin’ going on, Melvin, dear,” Lois bellowed vibrato from the back of the room. “And,for your instrumation, your present certainly isn’t helping much, either–for the second time! I give up!” she wailed.
Melvin muted the tube and muttered to its 85 inches, “maybe it’s not the chair, dear, ya old . . .”
Obviously out of earshot, Lois went back to getting kneaded; mostly ouching to the chair whenever it rolled up her bad back, and complained that it was “just about as worthless as Mei and all the limpy hands in Pickney, Nebraska.” She kept up her harpooning as the Cloud Ten began its yoga phase–stretching the muscles and tendons in her legs and arms; and stretching them a little longer until she could feel the fibers start pulling away from bone.
“Melvin, dear, something’s gone wrong with the chair’s mentionisms,” she screeched full-blast, arrowing herself up to Panic Mode. “It feels like I’m being quartered! Get over here!”
“Coming!” he hollered back to her. “After watching the replays of a Bull’s slam-dunk first,” he muttered back to the tube.
“NOW!” she screamed as her muscles and tendons continued stretching, then began snapping like old rubber bands.
He began to stand, trained like dog slobber to a bell, but then sat down again when he heard the sixty-six airbags deploy around her, cocooning her in heated comfort–and that kept inflating until they boa constricted her body completely, slowly muffling her cries for help. Melvin smiled in this rare quietude, stood again without a drill-Sergeant command for once, and approached the blessed massager to soak in the devious thrill of hearing Lois’s muted terror and the smothered sound of her arm and leg joints grinding loose from their sockets. He knocked on an airbag, asking brightly, “hello, anybody home,” and reset the arrow to Ultimate Relief.
“Don’t know if this mode was designed for her or for me,” Melvin ho-ho-ho’d as the bags in the footrest continued to pressurize. “All through the house not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse–and there’s nobody whining about their bad back any more, either,” he sing-songed, then enjoyed the melodious strains of her tarsals, metatarsals, and ankle bones cracking and snapping apart. Talk about holiday memories–the moment reminded Melvin of all the dinner wishbones she always elbowed her way to get to first because, "I was the one who done all the cookin!”
He circumvented the chair with another happy dance, and muted the beer commercials to enjoy the rest of his insufferable wife’s mechanical kneading; well pleased with the six individual massage mechanisms that teamed with the superior spinal decompression apparatus to pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop all twenty-three discs in Lois’ spine in succession, starting from her lower lumbar area, to her thoracic area, to her cervical area. Twenty-three ginuwine shrieks of muted terror. Lois became an invertebrate, the worm that she was—it was physically impossible for her to have a bad back now.
“Well, that certainly did seem to help you much, you pill-popping, WebMD-addicted ovine!” Melvin snooted in imitation.
He stood back grinning like a peanut-munching squirrel as the side body rollers kicked in: these eight, designed to increase blood flow, forcefully pushed and pushed. And pushed until they crunched, then pulverized her ribcage, good-for-nothin pelvic area, and internal organs as effectively as a trash compactor. He laughed out loud as the twelve pressurized body bags compressed her torso so tight that her used-to-be innards seeped out between the cracks onto the faux-leather upholstery.
“Guess I’ll be saving gas money since the trip to Grand Island tomorrow will be unnecessary, now. Shoulda had it Scotchguarded,” he sighed fakely pathetic, like Lois would have done.
With nineteen minutes gone, the Cloud Ten began its maniacal inclination back to the sitting position and a final kneading from the four pressurized airbags tightening around Lois’ neck area until the wrinkles in her face disappeared like Botox; until her head expanded so much from the escalating pressure that it popped like a party balloon packed with maggots, chucks of unused thinking stuff exploding from a bait cannon.
The massage wound down; the Cloud Ten’s angry-sounding grinding mechanisms softened to a quiet hum, its airbags deflated, and the rest of Lois Krogmieir oozed out to the floor, pain-free.
Melvin, looking over to ohh and ahh at the pieces of his wife that were now Christmas tree ornaments, faux-tromboned, “you have my deepest symphonies, dear!” and turned back to the 85” black-paneled tv to enjoyed the second half of the Bulls game.
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