ONLY IN AMERICA.....

Does anyone remember this girl? I wrote about her last year in one of my blogs. She is Samantha Hess from Portland, Oregon. When I last wrote about her, she was just starting her own company called "Cuddle Up to Me," where people would hire her just to snuggle up and spoon with. That's all! There's no sex involved, just some old fashioned cuddling. Does it ring a bell now? Well, Miss Hess' cuddling business is apparently booming so much that she lies in bed 80 to 90 hours a week. What's a girl to do, but start hiring some other full-time snugglers to keep up with the demand? Talk about fixing the unemployment rate one cuddle at a time. 

29-year-old, Hess says, "I'm working 80 to 90 hours a week. I literally can't keep up with it. I'm scheduling for February right now." Hess, who is releasing a book on the science of touch this February and is in talks on a reality series, has already been flooded with inquiries from people who like to snuggle. This professional cuddler is looking to expand her warm and fuzzy empire by adding an actual brick and mortar location and hiring six-full-time snugglers. The girl who gets paid by the hour to lay in bed in a completely platonic way says that she will put job applicants through a rather rigorous vetting process before she decides to hire them. She says, "It really requires a lot of intricacies. My training program is 40-hours long." WHAT? Who doesn't know how to snuggle or spoon? 

One key requirement is to be comfortable wrapping your arms around all walks of life. Hess' mostly-male clientele runs the gamut of old people, overweight people and even people with debilitating diseases. So, basically, you have to be okay with things like that if you want to snuggle for Hess' company. The job interview may be the only one of its kind where touching is not only allowed, but heavily encouraged. Hess says that she adheres to a daily regimen to make her body optimized for spooning. She shaves her legs daily and lathers her skin with coconut oil. If you ask this 5-foot, 115-pound professional snuggler, what separates her from the legions of amateurs who love to spoon? She would tell you her sense of touch is extremely well-developed and having the right pressure in the right place is a skill that many people have down really well. 

As I said earlier, Hess' comfort crusade started last year when she left her office job to start her own business. The certified personal trainer and physiology buff contacted a lawyer last April to make sure she wasn't breaking any laws and then her business was off and running and she hasn't looked back yet. She makes each client sign waivers limiting physical contact and if patrons push those agreed-upon boundaries, they get bounced. She doesn't accept tips because she doesn't want the wrong idea to be taken. 

Hess has a stable set of clients and she can schedule as many as five sessions on any given day. She either visits her customer's home or does house calls. This is a pretty strange phenomenon, but for some reason her business is being replicated throughout the country. Similar snuggle shacks have popped up in California, New York and Colorado. Well, in Colorado, they might need one for all of that legal marijuana they're smoking. They'll need naps after that and will need to snuggle up next to someone. 

Hess is expecting to open a full-fledged cuddle emporium, complete with four rooms for cuddling and an event space for seminars in the coming months. She says, "This is my life's work. This is just the beginning." Here's what I don't get; Does she go alone on these snuggle sessions or with a bodyguard? If she goes alone, what happens if one of her male clients get all-horned up and tries to molest her or rape her? Does she have a can a mace ready by her side? My point is that she's 5 foot, 115 pounds. How can she fight off an overweight man if he was to push himself on her? I guess there has to be some degree of respect before she can move forward with any client. I wonder if my blog had anything to do with her booming business. Or is she just that good of a snuggler?