Equine Therapy: Heidi Gets a Pedicure
Approximately 3 times a year, I treat myself to a
pedicure at a nail salon. Approximately
3 times a year, the nail technicians at the nail salon run to the back room and
to do “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to see who gets saddled with my hooves.
“I’m here for my “shoeing”,” I joked today to the
Vietnamese girl who runs the place. She
doesn’t understand what I’ve said, but she knows my feet. She announces something to the other
employees in her native tongue-- something that sounds like:
“Who hasn’t done a horse footed woman, yet?”
I see their faces get longer and their eyes open wider and
a younger girl is ushered to the front like a virgin about to be tossed in a
volcano.
She says, “Go pick a color,” trembling.
It’s not my fault my feet are nasty…not entirely. Heredity plays a factor--I got the thick heel
skin compliments of my mother, and the petrified toenails from Dad. I’m also a long way from my feet because I’m tall.
I also have a hard time seeing my feet without my glasses on. I try to moisturize, but nothing penetrates a
thousand layers of dead skin.
Today, the day before Mother’s Day, was the busiest I’ve
ever seen place. I thought about going
home, but my feet are so bad, they’re starting to pick up carpet fibers.
As soon as my feet had soaked and were up on the bench to
be worked on, I hear my pedicurist say two addition things in English:
Channel
Lock Pliers and Goggles
This was not the soothing, spa experience I was going
for. The neophyte was not going to be
cowed by my animal heels and was fiercely determined to be the “alpha.” She clipped and sawed and planed like Norm
Abrams on the New Yankee Workshop. I sat there, smoke rising, toenails flying like
B-Bs, like a 2x4 in shop class.
God.
The next step is optional, but I gave her a “thumbs up”
and she took out her razor blade and wicked off my dead skin, forming the
mini-blizzard of a snow globe turned upside-down and right-side up again. There was nowhere to look except down…in
fascination.
“You should leave a little of that on,” I said, trying to
relieve anxiety, “for traction.”
Comments
What a girl needs to go through for some TLC....
Perhaps because I was cursed with the hooves myself. ;)
Thanks, Heidi, for crafting a text that transported readers to the seat beside you.