ASHEVILLE FOOT AND ANKLE
On Wednesday I learned why my toenails looked so disgusting, with a huge hole in the toenail of one big toe and a thick chalky lump behind the toe next to it. All the rest of the toenails looked pretty terrible, too, cracked and narrow and sticking out in every direction, more claws than toenails. I went to the foot doctor expecting a lecture, maybe even a spanking, with all kinds of therapies being prescribed, just in time, before the nails started falling off.
It was a fully trained medical doctor who came in, who looked at my feet without being perturbed, cheerful and uncritical as he answered my questions.
Why did my toenails look so gnarly and twisted and ugly? Simply damage to the toenails, he said, for one reason or another caused by old age, but nothing preventable and nothing to worry about. Why did I have a hole in one that looked as if I was going to lose the toe? Same answer, a damaged toenail, damaged for no reason and nothing to worry about. What was the function anyway of my toenails? None that he knew about. If they prevented me from mating and prolonging the species evolution would have abandoned them and I wouldn’t have any. But since I could mate just as well with them as without them evolution left them alone. They must have, at some point in human evolutionary history, had a function. Maybe at one point humans only mated other humans who had well formed toenails and then gave up the fetish.
I think he had given this lecture a number of times before. The reason old people with gnarly toenails come in every three months to get their toenails trimmed is because Medicare covers the whole cost. Going to a fancy nail salon is much more expensive. He said he performed other services that required medical training, but here he was, as a highly trained doctor, cutting old people’s toenails and answering questions. I’ll have to look carefully when I get my report from Medicare to see how much money the American taxpayer is getting stuck with to get my nails trimmed by a highly trained doctor.
He very rapidly trimmed my toenails with a very sharp small bladed scissors. I asked if that is what I should use if I could manage to bend over far enough to do it. He said no, I would cut off a toe, at which point I guess his training would be useful. Then he used a buzzing whirring device and cleaned off my toenails. The huge hole on the top of my toenail was spun away and the nail looked like new. He wore a mask to keep from breathing in toenail dust. I didn’t ask him what breathing the dust would do.
I asked him how often I should cut my toenails. Never, he said, come back in three months and I’ll do it for you. My toenails now looked like those of a 15 year old. I went home happy.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 