Fancy Feet

I've never paid too much attention to my feet. I don't own any toe rings, ankle bracelets, or cool tattoos. Before this summer, my tootsies rarely saw the light of day, so I didn't see the point in expending the effort in decorating them.

When I was 7 or 8, I started taking ballet lessons. By the time I reached that pre-adolescent stage where all of my friends were experimenting with nail polish, I was learning how to tie on my first pair of pointe shoes. Pointe shoes (also known as "toe shoes") are special ballet slippers that have a very strong arch and a very hard, flat toe box that allows one, with much practice, to dance on their toes. They are usually made of pink satin on the outside and tie around the ankles with ribbons. They are beautiful. They are also comparable to medieval torture devices to dance in. At least they were for me.

Soon after starting pointe classes, my toes became a bloody, blistery mess that just didn't go away until I stopped taking ballet lessons altogether. I could never seem to get the lambswool that you are supposed to wrap your toes in prior to shoving your foot into the shoe to stay where I needed it, and after about an hour of dancing on my poorly protected toes, the friction from the shoes just wore holes in my toes. At least, that's what it felt like. Needless to say, it would have been a complete waste of time to try to polish my toenails, because it just would have worn off.

I did experiment with various toe protection strategies. I tried using differing amounts of lambswool, thinking that if I crammed just the right amount of stuff in there along with my foot, the wool wouldn't be able to shift around while dancing. This proved to cause some kind of temporary nerve compression, and I had to shamefacedly take myself and my bloodless, tingling toes back to the dressing room to remove half of a sheep from my shoes before I could resume class. I cut the toes off of an old pair of socks, thinking that it might help keep the wool where it was supposed to be, without much improvement. The only thing that really seemed to help, was in fact Band-Aids. One for each toe. At one point I was taking 4 or 5 classes a week, and with ten toes to cover, I'm pretty sure I am responsible for Johnson & Johnson's profit margin during those years.

When I was about sixteen, I quit taking ballet lessons in favor of being a captain of my high school's dance team. I figured it was going to be the only time in my life that I breathed the same air as the Cool Kids, and I knew I wasn't ballerina material anyway. The Band-Aids came off, and my toes healed, but I don't remember wearing any kind of open-toed shoe throughout high school. These were the early 90's, and I guess strappy sandals hadn't been invented yet.

I then began my long and glorious career in health care (only not) and every personnel manual that came with the contracts I signed had the explicit direction that no open-toed shoes were to be worn while at work for health and safety reasons. This was very dramatically illustrated one night while I was on call as an intern. It was probably about 2am (because, I have learned, all crappy things on a call night seem to happen at 2am) and I was trying to admit this very intoxicated, belligerent man who decided to express his unhappiness with me by puking on my beautiful brand-new Dansko clogs. It was difficult to maintain a "healing" mood after that.

Anyway, I didn't see the point in buying shoes that would hardly get out of the closet, so I have gotten to this point in my life owning only one pair of open-toed shoes. They are a well-loved pair of Born sandals that I have already had to have repaired once, but I will cling to them until they literally fall off of my feet because they are so comfy. And my undecorated feet look just fine in them.

About a year ago, however, I had my first pedicure.

Wow.

Who knew my feet could be so soft? Or look so snazzy with bright red nail polish (a shade aptly named High Maintenance)?

So, now that I have no work-related restriction on footwear, and I am not single-handedly supporting the Johnson & Johnson family buying Band-Aids for my toes, I have started trying to keep my toenails polished. Which is harder than you would think because I missed out on all of that polishing practice when I was 13! And, I have no cute summer shoes to show off my fancy polished toes!

Somebody better alert VISA. I'm going shoe shopping!