I had the worst pedicure of my life yesterday. Not because my toes were painted badly or because I was injured, instead this was horrific because the young man performing the procedure touched me as if there were no life in him…or in me for that matter.
His hands massaged at my toes, feet and legs as if those hands were automatronic dead fish. And, the experience was as though the automated fish were being flopped about my digits, appendages and limbs as a gift, given by a being who truly believed that dead fish flopping was miraculously sensual for the woman with her feet in the tub.
This young man was performing a perfect replication of the movements done by the female counterpart to either side of him. He even glanced over to watch them, now and again. Yet, there was NOTHING. No purpose. No focus. No exchange between caregiver and receiver…not even the connection of technician to customer.
Just that motion against my skin.
I thought maybe, at one point, the sensation would make me queasy…but, then, I exchanged nausea for curiosity…
What the hell is he doing…and why?
He trimmed at my cuticles as if moving the nippers around the base of my nail while opening and closing was the point, was his purpose…the opening and the closing while following the path was the job to be done…and done with fluidity and style—the occasional twisting of the elbow out to the side to aid in delicately maneuvering around that corner—the metronomic wipe off on the towel to clear way the pared skin—
What pared skin?
Had this poor soul never actually had a pedicure? I wanted to see his feet. More fascinating, what other activities may be plagued by this phenomena? What else looks as though it is being done to us or for us but, in truth, is all what it looks likes and none of what it IS (or what it is supposed to be)?
Possibly:
- Cooking (e.g., fast food and pre-frozen packaged dispensaries disguised as restaurants)
- Education (e.g., prefabricated curricula presented by instructors with little or no expert knowledge of the subject matter)
- Romance (e.g., Match.com, speed dating, Internet chat rooms)
- Art, Theatre, Dance (e.g., untrained creators who present images, performances, movements that "approximate"--and/or trained imps who fit a trends of physical attractiveness, but actually possess no innate talent--techno-talented assemblers of pre-programmed graphics who know nothing, feel nothing of the passion that drives true art)
- Medical care (pseudo-nurses...on and on)
My karmic/kismetic connection with the blogosphere reached, today, into the brick and mortar world. I began writing this post yesterday. Today, while consulting with a surgeon, he mentioned his fear of colleagues who performed the same procedure that is his specialty. He fears their antiquated lack of understanding of the source of the condition--though these other surgeons have accepted that the neo-treatment works, they have never internalized that the reason it works is because what had traditionally been seen as the cause of the particular condition (in this case, chronic pain) was not the cause at all. They perform the procedure as a matter of going through the motions of relieving the patients' pain, but they have no understanding of why it works--which can lead to less than perfect execution of the surgery, in the opinion of the surgeon I saw...and I could see how he may be right.
In addition to grossing me out, the experience of this pedicure has left me petrified, or at least highly wary, of all the things I must rely on others to do for me, all the things I cannot do to, or for, myself.
Note: Wikimedia Commons Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nagellack11.jpg
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