Dainty Digits They Aren’t
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| Female Feet of the Family |
Ugly
feet! Those would be mine. I have them, always have. At least I don’t have an
alien toe like one of my girls—her second toe extends a half-inch past the rest
of her toes. Unfortunately, each of
my toes has alien tendencies. Always awful, age has worsened the appearance of
my toes—knobby, bent, crusty, splitting nails, dry skin—each toe has succumbed
to the years of schlepping me through life. I call the toe next to my “baby”
toe my shy toe because it sneaks
behind the third toe and stays there, gathering whatever dirt and dust doesn’t
glom onto the other toes. In a few more years, it might never come out of
hiding except when I wrench it out and give it a good scrub. My daughters have
seen my toes, and, to their dismay, they know these nubs are hereditary. No
crystal ball is needed to predict their future feet; all they have to do is
gaze at mine.
I
have accepted my feet in all their funkiness, but the world likely continues to
be shocked when exposed to such blemishes on beauty. To put a balm on the
blight of these hideous hooves, I sometimes polish my toenails. It doesn’t
help, but it distracts, and about once every three years, I even step into a salon
for a pedicure and foist my feeties on some unfortunate technician.
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| Toe separators always make me think of uppercase Es, as in EEEK, look at my feet! |
Friday
was that day. A friend of my son’s attends cosmetology school and in an effort
to get a bargain, I booked a pedicure. I knew all kinds of feet walked into the
low-cost salon, so I figured mine might not frighten the students too much. As
a plus, any student who could beautify these feet would get an automatic A. Before
I left for my appointment, I scrubbed my feet until nary a dot of dirt remained
on them. They weren’t less scary-looking, but they were squeaky clean.
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| The pedicure trade will never have enough tools to tackle my toes. |
I
apologize for things that aren’t my fault, so in keeping with that proclivity,
I apologized for my feet after the student (I’ll call her Tootsie) directed
them toward the bubbling footbath. “Just relax,” she said. I think getting a pedicure is supposed to
be enjoyable, but I spend the time fretting about my feet and feeling pity on
whomever is tasked with tackling my toes.
The
pedicure progressed to what is supposed to be the best part—the foot massage.
Tootsie suggested I roll up my Capris so she could smooth lotion on the lower
part of my legs as well as my feet. I hesitated, knowing that she’d see the horrid
age spots on my legs and my cracked and dry alligator skin. When I rolled up my
pants legs, however, even I was shocked. Horrors! That’s when I saw them, the
seven hairs on my left calf. Yes, seven, total—on my entire leg. A ray of
sunlight or strong overhead lighting sometimes catches those stragglers and
makes them shine for the entire world to see. I shave those seven hairs about
once every three weeks to keep up appearances, but I obviously missed them for
the last seven months because each was an inch long. Of course, they weren’t in
a clump but meandered about the front of my leg. (All nine hairs on my right
leg must have met the razor on its last swipe across the terrain because they
were invisible.)
I
was mortified. Poor Tootsie was subjected to the ugliest toes on Earth, she had
to smear lotion on my horrid age spots, and worse, she witnessed the weird hair
effect that happened to me post-menopause. Why my legs went from having a
normal amount of hair to having a total of 16 on both legs is a mystery to me. I
would stop shaving completely, but those 16 look too strange when they’re an
inch long. I apologized (again) to Tootsie, who took it in stride and once more
suggested that I relax. No way. If I had a pair of tweezers, I would have
snatched those hairs out while she massaged my feet. Instead I used my fingers
to grip the ones that weren’t too slick with lotion and yanked them, resolving
that henceforth whenever I tweeze my eyebrows, I’ll pluck those 16 hairs, too.
Tootsie
was probably more relieved than I was when the pedicure was done—simply so she
wouldn’t have to hear me apologize again. My toes sparkle and shine and don’t
shock and dismay from my open-air flip-flops. As soon as I got home, though, I
dashed into the bathroom, grabbed the razor and made certain all 16 hairs were
shorn. Three years from now before my next pedicure, right after I scrub my
feet, out come the tweezers!
