Not a Dry Eye

Sometimes it’s worth being on a peak hour train, just for the conversations you overhear. I realise that sounds like a bit of a stretch, but hear me out.

This guy sitting across from me this evening was chewing his mate’s ear off about his son having graduated as an osteopath – apparently, this is in addition to already having a degree in physiotherapy, which I’ll grant is no small thing.

Anyway, from what I could make out, the son in question is currently squeezing in some extra professional development while visiting his proud parents in Melbourne. Dry needling training courses for manual therapists are, it seems, quite the thing – that’s if the way the other guy responded is anything to go by. He pretty much started bawling his eyes out on the spot.

Once he’d managed to get himself together enough to give his nose a good blow, guy #2 explained that he had dry needling to thank for his wife’s renewed lease on life. Apparently, she had tried just about every treatment in the book for a neck complaint that had been thought to be chronic. For some reason, this needling technique had done the trick.

Honestly, I’ve never really heard of dry needling, let alone dry needling practitioner courses. Australia might be slower on the uptake than New York, which is (as I managed to piece together) where guy #1’s over-achieving son is normally based.

Never mind the details, though. The point is that you don’t witness an interaction like this every day – you know, a dude openly having a sob about something that doesn’t seem to warrant quite that degree of waterworks. There must be more to the story… but what?

Does guy #2 love his wife so much that he couldn’t bear to see her suffering acute cervical spinal pain? Is he deeply sad about his own son not opting to take up an allied health profession? Or was he simply having a very bad day, and recalling that he’d forgotten to pick up more peanut butter on the way home? I guess I’ll never know.