Twinkle Toes*

*True story of Al Zimbler’s life as it appears in his seventh short story humor book BEDTIME STORIES FOR NIGHTTIME LOVERS

It was my first time. It was in broad daylight in a storefront. It was actually in the back of that storefront, and the front door was not locked. Do you remember your first time? How old were you? Where did it take place? Here I am at a very advanced age and I am experiencing a first time with my wife’s urging, no less. I did it and it’s something to remember. It was pleasant. It wasn’t cheap. What is these days? My wife said I should do it more often.

It hurt but I didn‘t care for it was necessary. Midnight sounds had been emulating from my mouth each and every night as I turned from side to side on the bed. So all by myself I walked into that storefront with a very slight touch of bravado and I told the podiatrist “I am yours.”

“Lie down,” she said, and I did as ordered. I lay back on that plastic chair. Then she started to strip me. First the shoes, then the stockings. “Is that enough?” I asked.

Then she reached for what looked like a scalpel. Is she going to do this procedure without anesthesia? I wondered.

Nothing doing. Just a swab of some liquid on all my toes and with a small square cotton pad she was ready to do the surgery. It was good that l thought to wash my feet before entering this place of horrors. I shut my eyes for I am afraid of blood. “Not too bad,” she said as she went to work on my naked toes.

“Will it hurt?” I asked just before she bent over to start the operation.

“Not the way I do it. I have many years of experience and yours are not so bad. What brought you in for your first time?”

“It was the torn bedsheets, the cuts on my wife’s legs, and the difficulty of putting stocking on without tearing them to shreds. Plus the cost of all those Band-Aids every time my wife tried to cut my toenails.”

I asked as she was working if I would make her “Wall of Toes,” referring to the many times I went with my wife to the ob gyn doctor and saw all the pictures of the newborns that he had delivered.

“Not even close.”

“Ouch,” I yelled.

“I knew that toe would cause you pain. Now relax and let me finish.”

Easy for her to say when I looked down and saw a trickle of blood oozing out of the tip of one toe. “Can you freeze those toes?”

“Not necessary,” she said as she again bent down and nothing was spoken between the two of us for the next 20 minutes.

During those 20 minutes I would sneak a peek to see if I still had five toes on each foot. In my mind she was using a foot-long scalpel but in reality it was just a three-inch very sharp toe clipper.

She continued with her surgical skills and then said, “I’m finished.”

I looked down and saw I still had 10 toes and they all looked as if I were a newborn child. There was a full wastepaper basket of clipped toenails as she removed her surgical gloves.

As I sat up she went into a long explanation of what she had done to my newfound toes. I thanked her for the great job, and after paying her, I asked her about the picture of the very large toes hanging in the operating area. The picture was hideous and unbelievable. As she had no other patients waiting, she proceeded to tell me the story of that picture.

An elderly gentleman came in with his son and daughter-in-law to have his toe nails worked on. The oldster lived by himself, and every week the daughter-in-law would visit him in his apartment and clean the place, prepare some meals, and do all of his washing. She soon discovered that there were never any stockings to be washed. Upon inquiring why that was so, she found that he only had one pair of stockings and that he never took them off. It was apparent that his toenails were very large and needed to be cut.

When he came into this shop, the podiatrist tried to pull off the man’s stockings. They were so intertwined with his toes that they could not be pulled off. The podiatrist informed the gentleman that she would cut the stockings off and give him a fresh free pair when he left. He agreed.

The proof of his toes is in that picture. The toenails were at least five inches long and the toe next to the big toe on both feet had one of those five-inch toenails wound over the toenail of the big toe. The next two toes also had that same look. Only the little toes on each foot were not covering any of the other toenails.

The podiatrist asked the gentleman if he ever bathed and received a yes answer. He told her, as he had previously told his daughter-in-law, that he showered three times a week. When the podiatrist asked how he then managed to dry the wet stockings that he couldn’t pull off, he had a wonderful answer. He just lit the oven and sat on a chair and put both feet into the open door of the oven and dried off those wet socks.

I told the podiatrist I would try to be a regular customer of hers in the future for I wanted to hear more of those toe stories.