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| The Front Part of My Left Foot, With Blue Polish |
So why do I get pedicures, you ask? I have two reasons:
1. When my feet are smooth I am less likely to end
up with holes in the expensive support stockings that I have to wear because
the veins in my legs don’t work properly.
I more than make up what I spend on pedicures by not having to buy so
many pairs of those damned things.
2. Plain old ordinary vanity. This is not logical because I almost never
wear sandals, even in summer. The only beings
who see my feet all the time are me and my cat, Harmony. Harmony doesn’t care if I have neon colored
polish on my toenails and smooth heels.
She’s more interested in staring out the back window at the local urban
life forms, both animal and human.
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| Cat in the Act of Not Caring About My Feet |
Pedicures are great at first. I immerse my feet in a luxurious whirlpool
bath with blue stuff in it and it feels really good. If I could just stick my toes in the spot
where the whirly water comes in and leave them there indefinitely I could be
happy for the rest of my life. Then the
pedicurist makes me take one foot out of the safe comfort of the water and prop
it up in front of her. It’s all downhill
from there on.
No matter what she does to my feet – clipping my toenails,
massaging my arches, scraping my heels, buffing the nails – it tickles. Sometimes it tickles just a little, sometimes
it tickles a lot. What should be a
luxury spa experience becomes an involuntary jerky, giggly sitting dance.
It occurs to me that tickles are like pain. If something hurts and you focus your mind on
how much it hurts you are going to make the pain worse. If you don’t think about it so hard, it
doesn’t hurt as much. I figure that if I
apply this principle to my ticklish feet, they won’t tickle so much. This works fairly well until the pedicurist
touches one of my feet in the wrong way, and the spasms and giggles are
suddenly back, worse than before.
All things must come to an end, however. When this whole procedure is finally over, my
heels are smooth again, my feet are clean and doused with sweet smelling
lotion, my toenails are shouting with color and I am happy in the knowledge
that my support hosiery bill will be smaller again.
