A band-aid is better than a bare toe
I'm weird about toes. I actually hate toes. I find them disgusting. I hate my toes. I hate your toes. I hate all toes.

For many years my toes never saw daylight. Even in the summer I would wear socks and shoes. When at home alone, I would still at least wear socks around the house. I had a fabulous sock tan line throughout the summer months, which I somehow found less disgusting than sporting open toes.

I'm not sure where my toe hatred began. I don't know if I had a traumatic toe incident, or if I've just always abhored the sight of toes because they deserve to be hated. I think at one time when I was younger I was fairly friendly with my toes. But somewhere along the line I became grossed out, maybe by my own hand, and ever since I have been strictly anti-toe.

My toes are not unattractive. In fact, as toes go they are quite nice. They are long and skinny, as are my feet. I've always been self-concsious about my Peggy Hill-esque feet. But considering other horrendous feet options, my feet and toes are actually quite desirable, as feet go.

Over the past few years I've gotten much less weird about my toes. I now freely wear sandals and flip-flops throughout the summer. I even shop for cute open-toed shoes, to have a variety. I enjoy the comfort and freedom provided by less shoe and more air.

But one toe related thing I will never budge on is the condition of free-range toes. It is IMPERATIVE to have polished toenails if toes are going to be out and about. And chipped, poorly applied polish will not cut it. A naked toe is an evil toe. A toe with chipped polish is basis for toe removal. Even just the thought of polish-free toenails turns my stomach. Toes belonging to boys are just absolutely off-limits to me, because naturally boys prefer not to wear toe nail polish. Even though boy toes are the most digusting toes of all. How do they get that way??? Blech.

I have a very strong policy about not letting people touch my toes. Well, except for a select few boyfriends over the years. Funny how 'lub' can change a heart on the whole footrub thing. Anyway, the Anti-Toe Touch policy makes the Mandatory Toenail Polish policy a bit tricky at times. I have never had a pedicure. The thought of that makes me all itchy and ancy. I don't even really like to touch my own toes, much less allow a perfect stranger to touch my toes in front of other people at a salon. But, I've learned to accept my toes and the fact that I have to touch them in order to get polish on them. Therefore to maintain constant, chip-free polish on the toes, I have had to resign myself to regular self-pedicures.

Now, being weird about the toe thing and all, a toenail polishing session for me is quite an ordeal. I hate doing this so much that I go all out to do the best, neatest, most durable polish job ever, in hopes that it will be several weeks until I have to endure this again. It's time consuming and tedious, and something I never do in the company of others, but I find it is worth the time and effort. I apply several layers of pre-polish, chip avoiding, all-round anti-chip stuff before I even get to the actual polish. Then it's two coats of polish (more than that gets goopy and messy and infringes on the acceptable appearance of the polish), finishing up with a top coat sealer. At the end of the toenail polishing process, there aren't many things short of a jack hammer that can knick the paint job on my wee little toes.

Unfortunately I decided to unintentionally put that to the test last week while cleaning in my kitchen. Did you know that even when you use the attachments on the vaccuum cleaner, that little whirly brush sucker thing underneath still turns and whirlies like it means business? As I used an attachment on the vaccuum to clean some cobwebs out of the corner of the ceiling, I inadvertently lifted up the vaccuum just a bit from the floor. It then landed haphazardly directly onto my big toe, and proceeded to chew up said toe, polish and all.

Well, I yelped. I probably cursed, too. It was all kind of a blur to get the vaccuum off of my toe before it proceeded to eat my entire foot. I looked down at my toe and was very, very sad. My very pretty toes, which I had just painted with the whole shebang the night before, were not so pretty anymore. Actually, it was just the big toe. The remaining toes on the foot escaped unscathed.

Not only was most of the polish ripped off of the main part of the nail, most of the nail itself was chewed up on the end. And there was bleeding. All over my clean floor.

I hobbled to the bathroom, cleaned the toe a bit, and assessed the damage. It actually wasn't too bad. It wasn't hurting as much now that the initial shock of the attacking whirly thing had passed. The worst part seemed to be that most of the polish, as well as several layers of the nail had been buffed off, and the end of the nail was quite jagged. I was seriously grossed out. Toes are gross enough looking normal. When injured, it takes the gross out factor to a whole new level.

Bandaids. I located my stash of Bandaids and applied two. One to cover the offending bleeding end-of-toe, and another to hold the first Bandaid onto the toe. Back to cleaning.

The next day when I uncovered the toe pre-shower, I discovered that the toe itself seemed fine for the most part. But the polish was in complete disarray. Especially compared to how good the rest of the toes looked. But, I didn't have time to repair the damaged polish. And I couldn't very well sport the toenail polish in that condition while wearing my open toed shoes. So, my solution was to wear more Bandaids. The Bandaids may not look the nicest, but it was definitely better than crazy, chipped polish, jagged claw toe.

I feel so strongly about the toenail polish issue that I went a week hiding the 'injured' toe under Bandaids before I was able to fix the polish damage last night. It's a serious matter, people.

Free-Range Toes Need Polish.

C.T.