This Little Piggy Went to Market and Salon
by Karen Williams | February 03, 2006
Seminole Chronicle
My friend Barbara gave me a gift certificate to get a pedicure. Not being the self-pampering type, I wasn't sure, at first, what it involved. I didn't think I had any sick pedis that needed to be cured.
"It's to get your toes done!" Barbara proclaimed. "You go to this salon and they soak and massage your feet and legs, and then they paint your toenails. You'll love it!"
I tried to muster up enthusiasm, but I know all-too-well that what other people find delightful can sometimes turn bizarre for me.
Take massage, for instance. Years ago, I experienced my first one at a chiropractic office. It was so blissfully relaxing that I fell asleep, and the massage therapist couldn't awaken me when my allotted time was over.
The chiropractor himself had to come and peel me off the table and drag me into the waiting area, where I sat, slumped, for a long while - thumbing through anatomy magazines until my skeletal structure again took shape.
Of course, I was late picking the kids up from school. Then a school official yelled at me, the kids tantrummed because they had missed afternoon cartoons, and all the stress-relief from the massage went - whoosh! - down the drain.
Many people love to go to salons for facials, but on a recent trial run, I elicited an aesthetician who seemed exceedingly angry with her boyfriend. As she related his aggravating and thoughtless antics, she began to tug and yank at my facial skin with a vengeance.
It alarmed me, as I doubted my skin's ability to snap back, as in days of yore when I actually had collagen in my tissues.
I suffered in silence, trying to happily imagine I was in a zany Jim Carrey movie. My skin felt tingly and exceedingly alert after the facial, but it also seemed that there was much more of it than before and that the excess was prone to flapping in the wind as I walked to the car - not a desired look if you're less than age 95.
I probably won't return until the aesthetician resolves her romantic issues.
Thus I approached the nail salon with trepidation. Could this possibly be as good as Barbara had insisted? What if the pedicurist discovered I had athlete's foot, toe jam, or some wayward hair between my toes, and I became the laughingstock of the salon?
What if the pedicurist was grossed out by the weird toenail on my right foot - the one that's an inherited characteristic and grows upwards instead of parallel?
It's the one I've tried to restrain with tight band-aids and do-it-yourself surgery, all to no avail - the one that keeps trying to punch through the top of my shoe and look out on the world like a periscope.
Thankfully, my pedicurist was kind and friendly. The warm, frothy footbath was delightful, and the lotion rubdown of my aching "dogs" was out-of-this-world.
If my bizarre toenail shocked her, she didn't say so - she simply proceeded to put polish on it like the rest of my piggy nails, though she had to go through contortions to get just the right angle.
As I reported to Barbara, my first pedicure actually turned out to be a soothing experience, and for my next self-pampering adventure, I may investigate a little liposuction one of these days.
I think I now have the stomach for it.
***
Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
