Raul Ascunce
Not to sound narcissistic or anything, but I have beautiful feet. It’s true. My feet are beyond gorgeous. No grown man should have feet as beautiful as mine.
Let’s face it, all of us have a favorite feature about ourselves, and for this short, overweight, pear-shaped geriatric male, my feet are the only thing for which I am pleased.
Imagine my horror a couple of months ago when I noticed a growth on my left “piggy that had none” toe.
“Oh my God,” I said to the wife. “Oh, horror of horrors. My ring toe has a growth. A tumor. A wart. The cosmetic beauty of my phalanges is marred by this heinous toe specter.”
“Will you stop with the drama? The wife said. “It’s probably just a wart. I’ll make an appointment with my podiatrist to have it checked out. You are being ridiculous, you know.”
The wife poo-pooed my toe crisis because I know for a fact that she is jealous of my beautiful feet. She says there is nothing special about my feet and I should just stop being so weird about them. If that’s not jealously, I don’t know what is.
A couple of weeks later we went to the podiatrist appointment. My doctor, who is a personal friend, sat me down in the examination room with the wife watching from a chair nearby, just in case it was bad news and I was terminal.
I took off my shoes for the exam.
“Good Lord!” (I am paraphrasing here) the doc said. “These are the most beautiful feet I have ever seen, and I have seen millions of feet.”
The wife clicked her tongue in disgust, rolled her eyes, and exhaled a sigh of defeat. (De-feet … get it?)
“Your feet have great color, your foot circulation is excellent, and your toenails are perfection.”
I looked at the wife and said, “I told you so. This is an expert foot guy talking here.”
The wife mimicked the finger-down-the-throat gesture in disapproval.
“Well doc, what do you suppose that growth on my toe is?” I asked nervously.
“It’s nothing more than a mucoid cyst.”
“Did you hear that, dear? I said to the wife. “I’m not going to die.”
The wife waved me off and proceeded with her Wordle game.
“We’ll schedule an appointment and remove the cyst so that you can once again be the envy of the flip-flop community with these magnificent feet,” Doc said.
Two weeks later the cyst was expertly removed by the doctor and his lovely assistant (who also complimented my feet).
Four weeks later: “I’m off, dear. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Where are you going, honey?” she asked.
“I’m auditioning to be a foot model. They need an after pic for foot fungus.”
Again the wife mimicked the finger-down-the-throat gesture.
Raul Ascunce is a freelance columnist for the Sentinel-Tribune. He may be contacted at [email protected].
