Bipedal

I went to the doctor this morning and came away with the deeply unsexy diagnosis of "hammer toe". Unlike hammer time, this is not even arguably a good thing.

First, the nurse saw my Kindle and carried on an entertaining 15-minute monologue about how she found a book in the library that had streetnames she recognised and it turned out to be written by a girl she knew from her neighbourhood in Philly, and she called her up and said "Did you do all that stuff? Because if you did, you nasty," and the girl said, "Just don't read my other books." Which was all a bit surreal.

Then she asked about my foot, which was why I had come, and I showed her where it hurts and she considered it critically and then said,

"You have a pedicure recently?"
I wasn't sure where she was going with this.
"Does it look like I had a pedicure recently? If I'd had a pedicure and my foot looked like this I'd be asking for my money back."

She said she's seen a lot of pedicures gone bad lately, from old black ladies (her words) who start getting their feet done every two weeks and all the skin comes off.

I'm not an old black lady, nor do I play one on TV. Also, I haven't had a pedicure since last summer. So obviously I could not have a pedicure gone bad.

Then the doctor came and looked at my foot. I confessed that it wasn't so sore now, but I'd made the appointment because I was pretty sure that would make it get better, and my tactic seemed to be working. But that I'd come along anyway, and look, here's my stupid foot and right here underneath where it looks perfectly normal - or as normal as my foot can get - is where it hurts.

First he asked to see the other foot. Then he asked me if my feet had always been that way.

"You mean weird? Yup."
"Okay." He said. "So this is the normal foot - I mean, the asymptomatic one, since they're not all that normal---" (Not a man to mince words, this one. I like him.) "---and see where this toe bends up?"

So the reason the bottom of my foot hurts is because the toe on top is stupid. I have stupid feet.

"It's usually genetic," he remarked, helpfully allowing me to shift the blame to my father, where it belongs. Why the DNA couldn't have picked my mother's feet instead of her nose to give me, I don't know. I already had his eyes, his mother's hair, and his liking for bad puns; did I have to have his hoofers too?

But I'm sort of pissed off about this. I mean, it's not like I have a large collection of Jimmy Choos that will now start gathering dust, but it was hard enough to find shoes that fit pyramid-shaped feet to begin with (short, wide, high arches, your basic pyramid), and I'm already wearing the cushiest, most comfortable, most German-looking shoes you've ever seen.  

I have a two-day blogging convention to go to this summer, you know, I wanted to shout at the doctor. Where I will be meeting women I want to impress with my personal effortless sense of style. (Stop snorting. It makes your nose look funny.) I have to wear shoes that I can walk around Chicago in that also look okay with whatever I'm going to be wearing, into which a lot of thought will have gone.

I AM NOT READY FOR NUN SHOES. DON'T MAKE ME WEAR NUN SHOES.