Attack of the foot shaver

I am slowly recovering from an injury I sustained last week. I have been limping since the day after Thanksgiving because I managed to wound myself with a foot shaver. Twice. Dangerous things, those foot shavers.

If you've never seen one they work kinda like a vegetable peeler only for the soles of your feet. Ideally they're to be used to remove dead skin cells from around the heel or big toe or wherever else extra poundage and footwear friction have turned soft skin into alligator scales. The trouble is that because the tool is basically a razor blade on a stick, one wrong move and otherwise happy feet soon become butchered bloody feet.

I use the foot shaver often. My wife thinks I am addicted to it. I'm not though. I could quit at any time. Besides I have to foot shave in order to maintain my personally groomed existence. And this just isn't a good time to stop foot shaving. Not to mention I'm a funnier person when I foot shave. If she really wanted me to stop she'd throw it away and not leave it there in the soap dish. Such the enabler.

When I first bought the device I was briefly admonished by the saleslady at the beauty supply store. Notice it's called the beauty supply store and not the addiction supply store.

"Do you use that on your feet?" the woman asked with a scolding look, her eyes peering out over the rims of her eyeglasses.

"Yes."

"You know that's very bad for your feet, don't you?"

"Is it?"

"All you're doing is creating scar tissue on your feet every time you use it," she said.

"What do you recommend then?" I asked.

With this she smiled and went to try and find the products on the shelf she deemed appropriate for my feet as she explained each one. "You should start out with a foot moisturizer, " she said, "and then use a pumice stone and then finish with a foot buffer."

After she couldn't find the foot buffer she claimed they were out of them and told me that I should come back in a week. Frankly, the moisturizer alone cost more than I wanted to spend, and besides, her prescription didn't look like it would have done the job. Snaky saleslady always trying to upsell to the unwitting customer.

I wanted to ask her who she took me for. I'm not some queenie metrosexual type. I don't do moisturizers or even buffers for that matter. I want something just short of a weapon. Part of me wanted to tell her I'm hard core lady. There are things about me you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. Instead I just asked her to ring me up so I could get out of the beauty supply store before someone I knew walked in and saw me. The woman reluctantly sold me the shaver and blades.

Once outside I couldn't wait to break out my new gear. How strange would it be, I wondered, if I were to take my shoes off once I got to the car and get started? Nah, that nosy saleslady might spy on me through the store window and come harangue me on the appropriate techniques of proper foot grooming. Like she knows anything.

I could always drive around the back of the strip mall and hide out behind a dumpster and footshave. It wouldn't take me long to get a few good strokes in, I thought. Then again, that same buzzkill might step out back for a smoke break or something and catch me foot shaving. You know she probably smokes. Stupid gateway druggies. Come back in a week, my ass. That was probably just some trick to get me to come to one of her dumb meetings.

So I waited until I got home. That's how come I know I'm not addicted because I could wait until I got home. You see, I'm in control of my foot shaving.

Oddly enough, I never cared about what the bottoms of my feet looked like until I went through chemotherapy. One of the side effects of something they pumped into me was that the soles of my feet became extra soft. I don't know if it was one of the drugs I got or simply because of the amount of saline solution they put into me. I swear, when you undergo chemotherapy, they pump you so full of saline solution that you feel like getting Bausch and Lomb tattooed across your chest. For some people the extra soft feet are a hindrance. In extreme cases it hurts to walk or even put on shoes. Personally, I just basked in knowing my feet were baby smooth. Unfortunately, once the hair on my head grew back, so did the callouses on my feet.

Since that time, I've always yearned to have those same soft feet back. So now I foot shave. Is that so bad? It doesn't affect anyone but me.

I was first turned on to it by some woman in a nail salon that gave me a pedicure. Yeh, I've had a pedicure. So what! For twenty dollars it's the most socially acceptable way for a married man to peer down at the cleavage of a total stranger for ten minutes. Anyway, it was she who first taught me the steps to foot shaving. Turns out there are twelve of them. No correlation though. There just happen to be twelve steps.

Step one is soaking your feet. The second step is making sure you have a fresh clean blade on the foot shaver. That's important otherwise you end up with bloody butchered feet. Step three was . . . well, come to think of it I never did quite catch the last nine steps. The nail tech's English wasn't all that good. Come to think of it neither was her cleavage.

Regardless I now have two wounds on the heel of my right foot. Sadly one is on the right while the other is on the left, so I can't walk on one side of my arch and maintain a semi-normal gait. Instead I have to raise up and walk on the balls of my right foot and put my left foot firmly on the ground. I guess I could walk on the balls of both feet in order to stay parallel but then instead of hobbling I'd just be mincing. Which is worse?

In case you didn't know, the heel of your foot bleeds like a stuck pig. After I cut myself, I had to hop one legged around the house to fetch a couple of Band-Aids, leaving a trail of crimson dots on the tile floor. When I quickly bled through those I replaced them with more Band-Aids. I eventually put on a sock over them but it too soon became blood stained. Yuck.

The blood did stop after I covered it with enough Band-Aids and raised my foot above my chest. Like I said, I'm on the mend now. I'm fine. I know what some of you are thinking though. I can just hear it. You were lucky this time, Kevin. You've got to stop doing this to yourself. Find help. Don't wait to check off all the boxes.

Yeh yeh, blah blah blah . . . You people don't know me . . . You don't know how hard my life is right now . . . All I want is . . . a little something to keep my . . . feet . . . smooth at the end of the day . . . What's so wrong about that? Whatevah, whatevah . . . I do what I want.

Ouch!

Great, now it's my left heel.