I went and got fitted for my fancy new shoe orthotics on Monday. These orthotics, which based on the cost and amount of time it will take for them to appear in my life (3.5 weeks) are being hand-woven from silken unicorn manes, are going to transform my feet into something magical.
Before we got down to brass tacks, the orthotics lady (I don’t know her official title: foot goddess?) asked for a brief description.
I may have described my feet as deformed and “seriously wonky.” When I removed my shoes and socks, she said, “your feet are barely wonked.” And that when I knew I loved her. (I have had a string of amazing luck with the professionals in my life lately. Not a lemon yet this summer.)
I beamed! My feet were barely wonked! And Foot Goddess would know! She probably looks at feet all day. (Gah, that would be a horrible job.)
And then she took a closer look. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What’s wrong with your little toes?”
Alarmed, I looked at my feet. They’d been fine that morning. Wait a minute, they still are fine. Aren’t they?
“Ummmm…nothing,” was my exceedingly clever reply.
“They’re really short. Practically non-existent. How do you walk without falling over?”
I knew the answer to this one. “Oh, that! I don’t much. I fall over quite frequently! I’m known for it in fact.” I managed to shut up before I told her about my online name and how I came by it. (Hint: I’m not the gazelle on crack because of my unmistakable grace.)
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “May I see you walk?”
So I walked about. Up and down the hall. “Are you walking normally?” she asked. At this point, I thought about throwing in something a little silly, but I did not. Not everyone uses humor when they’re uncomfortable.
“Yes,” I answered. I was considering demoting her from Goddess of Feet to simply Tsar of Feet.
“You have basically no stability due to the fact that your little toes are virtually non-functional.”
I suggested prosthetic toes, but that idea was quickly dismissed.
(Aren’t you glad you know that’s an actual thing?)
In the end, we decided that since there was nothing to do about my feet (and she never did rescind her diagnosis of ‘barely wonked’ so I’m sticking with that), we might as well just put them in the weird foam box to get fitted for the orthotics.
And so, I did.
That’s a rather anti-climatic ending, isn’t it? I feel like I should end with a joke.
What do you call a dinosaur with stinky feet?
Extinct
My feet look slightly better than that. Win!
