Plus Thoughts on How Women are Blowing it

Here’s an experience I never thought I would have: I just took my dad to a Vietnamese nail spa for a pedicure.

Interesting story: the Vietnamese manicure/pedicure industry began with actress Tippi Hedren. She was trying to help refugees from leftist oppression. Some Vietnamese ladies noticed her manicured nails, and they couldn’t get over them. Hedren hooked them up with some training, and the rest is history.

As I noted in another post, my dad has suddenly started having trouble taking care of his toenails. They have gotten thick and hard. I am not willing to become a toenail technician, and I lack the training anyway. I got him an appointment with a podiatrist, but to make sure he doesn’t hack up his toes before he sees the doctor, I located a nail salon and arranged for them to do what they could.

Here is what may be the most bizarre photo I have ever taken.

We got him into one of their NASA recliners, and I took the one next to it so I could interpret. He can’t hear, and the nail lady had a serious accent, so someone had to be the middleman.

I sent a photo to a friend of mine who is a nurse, and she noticed that his ankles are smaller where the socks used to be. Evidently something is amiss. He has never had edema. I’ll have to let his doctor know.

I know virtually nothing about pedicures, so I was surprised at the elaborate production I witnessed. They put his feet in a jacuzzi with a disposable liner. They trimmed his nails and ground them with a rotary tool. They did something or other to the skin on his lower legs, which was about like you would expect, given his age. They really cleaned him up. I was impressed. I plan to take him back several times a year, if the podiatrist signs off.

I had never been to a Vietnamese nail salon before, due to my not being gay. I once got a manicure in a Cuban place. It’s not the same. Cubans are angry, nervous people. The lady who worked on my hands was pleasant, but the ambience could not compare to that of the Vietnamese place. I can’t tell if Vietnamese people are angry and nervous or not, because they’re very quiet and polite, but however they may feel inside, they know how to promote an atmosphere of serenity.

Had I not dropped a sledgehammer on my little toe in the recent past, I would have been strongly tempted to give them a shot at my feet. My nails are affected by what I believe is a neoprene allergy, so they can always use some work.

I’m surprised we don’t see more men getting Vietnamese pedicures. When you go to one of these places, you see a side of women we have forgotten about in the West. Women have a special ability to soothe and heal, but these days they’re very busy #MeTooing everyone and insisting on showing us their tattooed artificial breasts in restaurants, so they seem annoying and somewhat dangerous.

Men hate being mothered, because it’s insulting, but they do like being assisted once in a while.

I don’t think modern American women understand how their image has suffered. I hear men talk when women aren’t around. We think a great deal about the abuse we have to put up with in order to be near women. We think about the danger of losing what we have worked for. We wonder if it’s worth it. We talk about the pleasures of sex, but we don’t talk much about how nice women are to us…because they aren’t. We don’t think about it very much. Not only is it not a conspicuous virtue of women which we discuss often; it’s barely considered part of their makeup.

That’s a shame, because if things were working correctly, we would think about it a lot. We would appreciate it. When we thought of women, instead of thinking about being criticized and exploited, we would think about the thoughtful things they do to make our lives easier. Raising kids and looking after houses don’t count, because women do those things for themselves. They marry men because we make those things possible.

When women divorce us, they generally keep the kids and houses. What does that tell you? They keep what they really wanted in the first place.

We have very low expectations. We hope for sex, children, and a certain amount of cooperation with the chores of life. We don’t talk much about affection and kindness, because we no longer expect those things.

When men discuss potential mates, they say they’re attractive, they work hard, they have good senses of humor, they’re smart…they say a lot of things, but they don’t say, “I know she’ll be there, always taking my side and trying to find a way to make my life easier.” I’ve never heard that, and I’m old! I’ve never seen it in a movie or in a book. How can that be? It’s amazing.

“Bridezilla.” Have you seen that word? Look it up. It speaks volumes.

One of my best friends always has a girlfriend or someone to date. When one drops out, a new one pops up. I hear a lot about the things he does for them. He fixes their houses. He mows their yards. He helps when their kids are put in mental institutions. He let one drive his car for months; it still has a vanity tag she designed on it. She was making $200,000 a year at the time.

I never hear him say, “Last week, Lulu took away my cell phone, made me a pie, and gave me a manicure.” They do absolutely nothing for him. Nothing. Never. I asked.

He’s typical. Think about it. You know it’s true.

This week I read about a woman who forced her fiance to finance a $100,000 wedding ring. Wonder of wonders: the engagement collapsed. Now she wants to keep the ring…which he is still paying for. That’s the American woman in 2018, summarized neatly.

A Vietnamese nail lady isn’t going to compensate for a bad marriage, and she won’t care about you. She would probably make a bad wife; a lot of men find Asian women sneaky and domineering. Those things are true, but at least she will spend half an hour reminding you that women have hidden potential. If men knew this, they would be lining up at nail salons, just to escape reality briefly.

I’m glad I got to do this for my dad. I was so tired of finding him annoying. Before he prayed for salvation, it seemed like I was subject to provocation a hundred times a day. I hated being angry. I fought it constantly. I was not interested in blaming him; I just wanted it out of me. Now I don’t have to fight it, and I can do thoughtful things for him without feeling resentful.

I don’t know what the podiatrist can do for him, but I’ll bet it won’t be a good substitute for a pedicure.