Aselin

I can not turn down food. An invitation to lunch would make me drop everything and leave in the middle of surgery, if I were a surgeon of course.

So imagine my delight when I get a spontaneous text from a friend inviting me to lunch. With glee, I eschew the glamor that is my daily life and peel out in the driveway to eat, I mean meet my friend.

Lunch was delicious, as food is wont to be, and the conversation was delightful. Having the usual pressing items on my list, I ignore them and suggest a pedicure. (This is why I have no productive friends).

I have a particular salon I have come to favor. Their polish lasts an unusually long time making the amortization of the investment more prudent. The sign above the salon is a catchy slogan like "Nails Only." We enter the establishment and are immediately intoxicated from the fumes of productivity. I settle in to the massage chair and start to flip through People magazine. My sister in sloth settles in for a manicure. Half way through my treatment she heads to the back room where they wax eyebrows. Every nail salon waxes eyebrows. Apparently it's not something that requires a lot of skill, but I certainly can't do it myself, so it's worth the investment.

Behind the curtain she disappears. I'm engrossed in Jon and Kate's divorce proceedings when I hear a muffled "Aaouw" from the waxing stall, I mean room. I look at the patron next to me and smile and awkward toothy grin. She nods trying to reassure me it was a one-time odd noise. Moments later we hear it again. It sounds distinctly like someone is being poked with a safety pin while being smothered with a pillow. My reassuring buddy now looks a little afraid.

I'm not sure what to do. My feet are submerged, the massage chair is mid-cycle, but that is my friend in there. "I-i-iiiii" comes from behind the curtain. As I am wrestling with what to do, (don't take me to an emergency) the curtain from the stall parts and my pedicurist emerges.

Without a word, she sits down and with a flourish, finishes my feet. I ask her if everything is OK, to which she nods yes and runs back to the stall. I shrug, and resume reading the upcoming roster for "Dancing with the Stars." "Eeeee-oof" What the heck is going on in there?

I have now been sitting a good fifteen minutes, unattended. No further noises have emerged from the stall so either my friend has expired or everything is going better. A few minutes later she emerges, looking just fine. We pay, chat as we return to my car and slide in to the plush minivan seats. The second her door shuts she yells "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?"

Shocked, I have no idea. My pedicure was fantastic. In fact this episode was three weeks ago and it still looks wonderful.

She then reveals that she asked for a bikini wax. The bikini wax is a tricky endeavor. Those parts are delicate, and quite frankly, I wouldn't trust mine to just anyone. My deeply wounded friend reveals that the first rips didn't go so well, and the few hairs that were removed didn't satisfy the technician who decided to tweeze the remaining ones. P-u-l-eeze. Even if you've never had a bikini wax you can figure out that you don't tweeze down there.

As I sit stunned, listening to her tale of beauty torture, I can't figure out who I blame: my pedicurist who had no business attempting a bikini wax having only mastered the eyebrow level at beauty school. Or my friend. The sign is VERY clear, this is a NAIL salon. Just like I'm not going to my podiatrist for a root canal, I'm pretty sure even my limited intelligence would have done a little wax reconnaissance before I stripped down and acquiesced to this scheme.

She clearly holds me partially accountable for her mishap. I did suggest the salon. Well, yes, I did for NAILS. I read the signs. I believe the signs, and I have avoided any scars to prove otherwise.