Jimmy and the Shark

“Oh man, you’re tight!” Jimmy says as he as he probes his powerful thumbs into my shoulder muscles.

“Aieeee! You better believe it!” I laugh. Laughing when you’re in pain seems to be a guy thing.

“What have you been doing? We gotta fix this!” Jimmy chuckles.

I’ve had pain in my left shoulder for months and can barely lift a glass of water without it hurting.

Today he goes even deeper into some muscle near the joint. The pain is so intense that I pound my feet up and down on the massage table. Suddenly something releases. I feel a soothing cool wave going down my entire arm as energy floods back in. What a relief!

I’m in a small, darkened room where Jimmy Quitan has his massage practice. My wife Susan first found Jimmy years ago and sees him as a real healer. The room smells of massage oil and mint; soothing Hawaiian music is playing on the CD player. Jimmy is pure Hawaiian, and has been a massage therapist for forty years. He’s just two years younger than I am, but appears youthful and strong. For years he’s worked on some of the best athletes in Hawaii – surfers, kiteboarders, tennis players. He’s been invited to Tahiti to work on the surfers who surf the big waves at Tuepheo. Many consider him to be a kahuna or healer. At first I found him a little intimidating, with his wild hair and powerful body, but now I feel like a good friend.

He rubs some CBD oil on my back and uses an ultrasound machine to work it deep down into the muscles. Mostly Jimmy works in silence, but sometimes we talk.

“There was a shark sighting at the beach the other day,” I mumble with my face in the headrest. “Did you hear about it?” Jimmy’s office is about 50 yards from Kamaole Beach.

“Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me. There are a lot of sharks out there. You better believe it.”

“I know the woman who had her leg bitten last year. She was just a few yards offshore,” I say, as Jimmy continues to work in the oil. “She was really traumatized by it.”

“Last week I had a guy come in to see me. He was out kayaking at La Perouse. He was just sitting there out in the ocean resting when he felt a big bump under his kayak. He looked down and there was this twenty-foot shark underneath. He was freaked out. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but the shark slowly moved away, and as it did, it rolled over. Its belly was pure white. It was a great white!”

“You’re kidding!”

“That’s what he told me. He came in to see me a week later. He was still shaking.”

“I didn’t know there were great whites in Hawaiian waters.”

“They’re here,” Jimmy says, warming up to his subject. “I was paddling out with a friend once to catch some waves. I saw a few turtles coming in, but didn’t think much about it. I went to catch a wave and felt something bump my board. I looked down and saw an eight-foot tiger shark. Man, did I get out of there fast! Later I realized that the turtles were swimming in to avoid the shark.”

Just about everyone who lives on the islands and spends time in the water has some shark stories. The Hawaiian word for shark is mano. “I have great respect for sharks,” Jimmy says. “They’re beautiful creatures.”

“I agree, but when it’s shark season I wear a shark band around my ankle. I doubt it will do much to fend off a thirteen-foot tiger shark, but it has a nice placebo effect.”

We lapse back into silence while Jimmy works on releasing my tense muscles. I breathe into each stroke.

A thought comes to mind. “You know Jimmy, I first came to Hawaii in 1959. I was on a passenger liner headed to New Zealand. I was on my way there to teach skiing during the summer. I remember we stopped over in Honolulu for a few days. It was just a little town then.”

“Not any more. The traffic is terrible. Worse than LA.”

“Did you grow up there?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do as a kid?”

“My dad had a concession at the luaus. I used to climb the palm trees and throw leis down to the tourists.”

“Wow. You climbed without any belt? Those trees are fifty feet high!”

“Just our bare hands. We did whatever we could to make a little money. I used to dive for coins when the ships came in.”

“How could you see? They didn’t have plastic goggles then.”

“We had goggles made of bamboo with a little wire joining them.”

“How old were you then?”

“In my teens.”

“Jimmy, I just had a thought! I was eighteen when I landed in Honolulu. You would have been sixteen! Maybe you were one of the divers I saw from the boat!”

We both laugh.

“Did you surf at Waikiki when you were there?” he asks. “I was there all the time.”

“Yeah, I tried surfing. All I can remember is that I got a horrible sunburn.”

He does a final adjustment to my neck. “Ok, we’re done!”

I get up from the table feeling high as a kite. The pain is gone. This means I won’t need to get into the whole medical system with my shoulder, with MRIs, appointments with orthopedic doctors, physical therapists, etc., which can take months.

“Jimmy, you’re a miracle worker!”