A Very Embarrassing Store

In romantic comedies (or just comedies in general) there is often a slapstick scene where the hero/heroine due to their lack of foresight or clumsiness gets into an embarrassing/potentially harmful situation. (See pretty much every scene in Meet the Parents.)

Now in most romantic comedies it's usually a girl falling down a flight of steps or off a piano or something. It usually endears us to the girl as a likeable character we can easily root for.

My life is not so cinemagentic.

What follows is a story involving all of those elements without none of the appeal because it contains me and, by extension my feet. I apologize for sharing this story with you, but I can not hide my shame any longer.

Every now and again I come down with a case of athlete's foot (Athlete's feet? atheletes' feet? What's the proper punctuation there?) I don't know why. Maybe it's because I have very hot feet by nature, but it happens. Usually I try to ignore for a night or two and see if it goes away. If it doesn't than I have to go out and buy some spray which, after a few days, with get rid of this pretty gross fungal growth on my foot.

This past week I have been suffering from a bad case of athlete's foot. What happens is I get into bed and my feet, when they're under the nice warm covers, go into paroxysms of ichiness. When it happens at night I know there is nothing I can do so I just try to ignore it and go to sleep.

The problem with this, is that I forget about my agony when I'm awake. So it's a couple of days before I remember to do anything about it. Two nights this week I went to sleep gritting my teeth and trying mightily hard not to itch my feet. I cannot describe to you the agony of unitched athlete's feet. It's like there's a tingling in your feet but it's a tingling that burns. It's like little insects are walking over your feet and biting you . . . but it also itches. I heard recently that it's irritation and not pain that's the worse thing your skin can endure. When you itch a scratch, it's actually pain you're feeling. It just feels good by comparison.

After the last few nights, I believe it.

So last night it was about 12:30am and I was sitting in bed. My feet started to itch as I was falling asleep and I decided I just couldn't stand it anymore. I got up, threw on some clothes, and went into the kitchen to steal my parent's debit card.(Btw. Our parents pretty much hand us the debit card whenever we want any money, so this part of the story isn't quite as bad as it sounds.)

Why did I have to take my parent's debit card at all, you ask? Well, because I am currently broke city. I have less than ten dollars in my bank account. I start my job at Harmony Cafe tomorrow and I probably won't be paid for another week after that, maybe too. I literally could not afford the eight dollars to buy my own athlete's foot spray. It's just terrible.

So I grabbed my mom's card out of her purse (I grabbed my dad's initially, but then thought of how embarrassing it would be if I was caught buying athlete's foot spray with someone else's card so I put it back. (I can usually pass as my mom.)

I took the card to a nearby gas station, but I'm pretty sure that the gas station was closed and, to make matters worse, they had JUST decided to repave their parking lot apparently so I couldn't even get in.

My heart heavy, I went to the local Festival Foods which I knew was open twenty-four hours. I drove up, walked in, and I promptly realized I was the only customer in the store. I was very, very tired at this point. I hadn't slept much the night before and my eyes were watering. So I was pretty braindead as I started walking around the store looking for spray for my poor itchy feet (which were still itching mightily, I might add).

Now I hate asking salespeople where things are. I can't stand it. Whenever I'm with my parents and we go the store for something they walk right up the salesperson and ask. It drives me nuts. I want to hide. So I was going to be damned if I was going to ask one of the six salespeople that were taking inventory of the store at night where to get podiatric medicine. (It's so a word.)

I'm not that familiar with where everything in Festival is anyway and it's a huge store, so I had to look for about ten minutes before I finally found it in the aisles with soap and other cleaning supplies. (It was not by the toothpaste and advil as I had suspected.)

Then I walked out of the store, checked out where the clerk said, "Good night, Gladys!" (That's not my mother's name, I changed it here to protect the innocent.) To which I thought. "Yes, yes my name is Gladys. Because that's who I am." I went to my car, drove home, and immediately got out the bottle to ease the pain in my feet and-disaster struck.

I was tired, mind you, and I incorrectly assume that it was the kind of bottle where you took off the bottle top and then sprayed it. Instead, it was the kind of bottle where you just pressed down at the top. So I took off the top, realized my mistake, and tried to put it back on.

It started spraying everywhere and it wouldn't stop.

I had to run to the bathroom (I had been just inspecting it by the front door) and jump into the bathtub to avoid it from getting everywhere. The spray made the bottle really cold and it actually hurt to touch so I was having problems getting the top back on. And there was all my precious Lotramine Ultra disappearing into the bathtub and NOT providing soothing relief to my feet.

So I scooped it up off the floor of the bathtub and wiped it on my feet and then struggled to try to get it to stop spraying. Finally, I managed to fix it. Then I got up, sprayed my poor feet, and then spent a good five minutes cleaning up the bathroom. (Which included the snowy footprints my feet left after I sprayed them, which meant that I crawled on my hands and knees back to my room so I wouldn't get them on the carpet.)

Anyway, long story short, my feet feel better. Also, I'm gross. If anyone ever asks you, "What's your friend like?" You should, "she's gross." She's a gross individual.

Women in romantic comedies have adorable, pretty people problems and pretty people mishaps. No one would ever write the story I just told you into a screenplay because it is too unspeakably horrible for words.

Pretty girls never seem to have these problems. I wish I could be like them.