Dani asked me Friday if I wanted to go get a pedicure with her over our lunch hour.
What transpired ended up being one of the single most terrifying experiences I have EVER HAD in a salon.*
*Wherein if salon= bad stripmall space with terrible attempt at flower stencils on the wall.
The pedicure started reasonably enough.
Get in the chair. Put your feet in the bubbling water. Play with the massage chair buttons. Wonder how at my height I could possible be too short for the chair… and yet wonder why the BACK OF MY SKULL is being shiatstu’d to the degree that I look like an extremely agreeable bobble-head.
I’m holding my polish I selected in my hand. It’s a fun, bright tangerine color. I’m pretending that I am not bothered at ALL by the filing. I AM. And the buffing. I AM. Really, the entire pedicure process… because, truth be told, the whole thing is kind of disturbing to me…. but you know… pretty feet and all…
The guy working on Dani is the English speaker of the group. The girl working on me keeps talking to him in another language and sort of gesturing to me. He leans over and grabs my foot and gestures to THE BACK ROOM.
Meanwhile, there is a 3rd woman sitting in our bubbling chairs and her feet are NASTASTIC. I mean, like a HOLY DRAGON FEET MISSING SEVERAL TOES kind of situation. Her pedicurist is attacking her feet with what can only be described as a… cheese grater? A straight razor? What the sign on the wall refers to as, “MR. RASPER“. Yes, really.
I tense when I see the gesture to the BACK ROOM because I am, of course, terrified that she is GETTING ONE OF THOSE FOOT RAZORS…. and she doesn’t disappoint when she digs through the drawer and presents one and turns it around in the light like I imagine a serial killer must hold a scalpel longingly up to the light….
“Psycho” shower scene music goes off in my head.
The FREAK OUT begins.
Me: DAAAAANI. DANI! SHE HAS THE RAZOR THINGY. OH GOD. OH GOD. OH GOD.
Dani: Ohhhh… you are so lucky! I love that thing. You will love your feet!
Me: NO. NO. NO. NO. NOOOOOOOO! *eyes glazing over* *heart-rate increasing*
Dani: It doesn’t hurt! You’ll love it!
Me: OH GOD. MY FEET WILL BLEED! OH NO. THIS IS TERRIBLE!!
*Flashback to the woman I saw getting this treatment moment before…. as they scraped and sliced her feet.*
I AM TELLING YOU IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE OPENED A GIANT BAG OF POTATO CHIPS and started flinging them around like Edward Scissorhands peeling potatoes.
Barf me out.
And I clenched my hands into claws and opened my eyes as wide as they could go and went into a state of catatonia while people around me glanced warily at me and giggled. The woman working on my feet started to freak out, herself, watching me freak out. She and the little Asian man working on Dani have a very low, but tense conversation in another language that I believe went something like this:
Her: I am not working on this big, crazy women.
Him: Dude! Do your job! Don’t be such a baby!
Her: Seriously, if you do not take over for me I am going to start crying and and also, I will punch you in the face.
Him: FINE! WHATEVER! GEEZ!
(they switch… and I hardly notice..)
When he switched to my other foot, I noticed.
Me: OH GOD! OH JESUS! THE OTHER FOOT! HE’S GOING FOR THE OTHER FOOT!
Dani: (laughing) It doesn’t hurt does it?
Me: BUT IT WILL! IT WILL REALLY HURT WHEN THE BLEEDING STARTS! OH GOD! OH GOD!
Dani: Man, you should SEE all the dead crap they are slicing off your feet! You are going to love your feet so much you won’t be able to stop touching them!
Me: *finally just passes out from fear*
When I finally notice that I can stop freaking out because Mr. Rasper has been put away and my little Asian guy is rummaging in the shelf for what I assume will be lotion or something like that… I decide to unclench and look at what I have to imagine are my poor bloody feet.
Two things happen almost simultaneously:
1. I see my pretty baby-soft pink feet that are NOT bleeding and NOT deformed, as I’d imagined.
2. I NOTICE THAT MR. ASIAN MAN IS PULLING A LONG, BLACK, RUBBER GLOVE ONTO ONE ARM.
…and I say something along the lines of….
JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO WITH THAT ARM THAT IT NEEDS A GIANT BLACK RUBBER GLOVE?!!!!
My brain decides to deal with this new and terrifying event by completely losing it’s shit.
He is lotioning and buffing my feet and I am hysterically, loudly, gaspingly, laughing my ass off. According to Dani, so was everyone else in the Chamber of Terror salon. I wouldn’t know. Because, as I mentioned… I’d totally lost my shit by now.
I laughed and laughed and laughed as tears ran down my face…
Then I jumped up and puked all over everyone.
……..
No, I didn’t. But it kind of seemed like that was next, didn’t it?
No, what happened next was Mr. Little Asian Man massaged my legs and feet and like the Dog Whisperer who knows exactly where to put pressure points on rowdy animals, and I immediately calmed as he accupressured my feet/brain into submission.
He then painted my pretty toes that gorgeous tangerine color and it seemed like everything was going to hunky-dory. Yes, it did. He planted me under the UV/blower thing that is supposed to dry your polish, which I swear is some fake machine that is supposed to make you feel like it’s working… and after a few moments, we pay and Dani goes out into the car to wait for me. I only have 3 minutes to go under the fake machine.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
So, I notice that some of my polish is actually on the cuticle of my big toe. I gingerly lift my foot up and just sort of scrape my fingernail along the cuticle and Mr. Little Asian Man sees this and FLINGS HIMSELF ACROSS THE SALON in a flash of ZIPPITY ZAM!!…. and inexplicably runs his thumb ROUGHLY over the entire nail.
!!!!
Which, OF COURSE, results in the ruination of the entire nail as the whole thing wrinkles up like saran wrap.
I gasp!
He gasps! Then, flings himself back across the salon and pounces on the floor next to me with white gauze dipped in acetone and the bottle of tangerine polish.
He props my foot up on his leg and takes all the polish off…. and then repaints it. Carefully… carefully…
And it immediately smears. So, we GASP! again in unison and he removes the polish again and painfully, carefully, starts to apply the polish again.
And THAT is the true story of how I tried to get a pedicure and ended up losing my shit, while my feet are attacked by a potato-chipper and a little Asian man wearing one enormous black rubber glove came to be lying on the floor in the middle of the salon, gently blowing on my big toe.