Am I On Candid Camera?

I love getting pedicures.  For several reasons.  I like the little foot and leg massage that go along with it. I like the way my feet look and feel when they're finished.  I don't like feet, even my own, so it's best that someone else (poor ladies) deal with them.  It never fails that I get comments like - you need deluxe.  You feet very dry.  You need wear shoes and socks.  I know.  I know.  I know.  I have dry yucky feet and heels.

Kris is not a fan of my feet either.  So today I finally went to see a dermatologist about them.  Kris got a recommendation from a co-worker for this particular doctor.  The recommendation came with a sort of "warning"....that this doc was old school.  Doesn't even take insurance - come prepared with cash or check.  Uhm, the old school comment, that was an understatement.

I walk into the office and am hit in the face with a smell.  The smell of an antique store?  Your great-grandfather's house?  Interesting.  Then I try to take in my surroundings.  Wood paneling.  In a doctor's office?  Old dishes and candlesticks on top of (I'm sitting here trying to think of what they were on top of) old pieces of furniture.  There was a big glass case or something right in front of the receptionist's window that you had to lean way over to sign in.  Oh, and the receptionist.  A bit ghetto, maybe?  Talking to the kid playing with puzzles on the floor next to her chair.

I sign in and hear a nasty rattling cough.  Yeah, that was coming from the 89 year old lady in a corner working on files.  I take my seat in a rickety chair to fill out my new patient paperwork as I watch the lady and young girl in the waiting living room (not a waiting room, not a living room, a sort of combo) eat their Handi Snacks.  Where am I?!  Should I run now?

I hear my name called.  I look up to find the doctor.  Oh, but you see, this wasn't just any ol' doctor.  This was a man who might weigh 95 pounds soaking wet with his stained white Wrangler jeans on.  Take off his black cowboy boots and he might only weigh 90 pounds.  I follow him into a room while checking out his denim Wrangler shirt.  He told me to have a seat, he sat across from me.  And that's when I had a hard time focusing on anything other than his eyebrows.  His Andy Rooney eyebrows.  And his out of control hair.  And his black teeth.

This is a joke.  Right?  This MUST be a joke.

What brings you in today?  My heels.  He puts on his chemist safety goggle-like glasses to take a look.  Oh, come on.  They're not THAT bad.  It was a very quick look before he started telling me of the prescription he was going to give me for some sort of acid.  Yeah, acid.  Maybe my heels are that bad.

He's writing out my Rx.  I'm checking out more old dishes and candlesticks in the room.  And all I can say is - I like all your collections.

Prescription in hand, I go back to write my check for the visit.  The receptionist had to first stop talking to the lady behind the counter bottle feeding her baby to tell me the amount.  I quickly wrote my check and almost tripped over what I could have sworn was a camera on my way out.

Yeah, I was on Candid Camera.  Surely I was.

(Oh, and he told me to call back in a month to let him know that everything is perfect.  I'm almost positive he won't be getting a call back from me.  I wonder if he still uses a rotary phone....)