Sitting on my wallet

I started going to a chiropractor several weeks ago. I messed up something in my back when I was at the gym a couple months back; I think I must have done too many clean and jerks. Oh that's right, I don't go to the gym. So it was probably from stretching to get the remote without getting out of bed or my poor posture from a year and a half of slouching at my desk at work. And sitting on my wallet.

The whole experience is dreadfully amazing. His receptionist is so friendly and bubbly that no matter how calm I was on the drive over as soon as I walk in the door I immediately become suspicious and rude because I assume she is hiding some horrible secret under her desk or maybe in the locked cabinet behind her and compensates by scaring the shit out of me with her intense smile. [editor's note: it's a run-on sentence, deal with it.] So I usually say as little as possible so I don't encourage her outrageous behavior and sit down in the lobby and wait for my name to be called.

It's about this time that I start to look around at the art on the walls. But then I realize that it's far from anything that could be called art. It's propaganda. I look to my right and see a chart detailing the amount of hours spent in the classroom by chiropractors as opposed to medical doctors. The chiropractors win hands down, according to it. Then I look to my left and notice the poster showing the recommended treatment path to follow, advising 12 initial visits in the first few weeks and then at the very least monthly visits from that point on. This green path to the top of the chart might as well be the stairway to heaven. But the occasional visitor, the sporadic appointment setter, is doomed to the the red path that hovers around the bottom of the poster.

My skeptical reverie is usually broken up at this point and I am ushered back to an adjustment room. I am directed to lie face down on the table, given heat on my back if I ask for it, and then left alone for several minutes. Then I hear the music. It's not oldies, it's not top 40, it's not smooth jazz, it's not easy listening, it's not classic rock, it's not alternative. Yet it sounds familiar. Oh my God. That's Michael W. Smith. I am going to get adjusted whilst listening to Michael W. Smith. I guess it's not as unexpected as getting a lap dance to Steve Green, but it's up there, as far as I'm concerned.

And suddenly it's the awkward hello to Dr. Scott as he comes in the door and I try to prop myself up to greet him. Dr. Scott is a 30-something type-A always-positive openly-Christian perfectly-chiseled specimen of a human being. Sometimes I don't bother to look at him and I just mumble an insincere hello through the little face crack in the padded table and hope he gets right to work so I can stop having flashbacks of my childhood spent in a Christian cult. I mean Christian culture, but the line can be kind of blurry as I have experienced it. So the adjustment commences, and then I am filled with positive emotion as I sit up and take inventory of how much better and straighter my back feels.

Then I rush out to the front desk and cheerfully set a follow-up appointment for the next week. I really do love the whole experience, and I recommend it to anyone. And not just because I get perks if I bring them new clients.