The Angry Elf From San Francisco

A couple of weeks ago my daughter, Emma, and I went on our yearly mother daughter weekend getaway.  We started doing this several years ago as a way to spend time together, have fun in the city, and get some shopping done...which is desperately needed when you live in a town as small as ours.  The trip is something we both look forward to all year.  As part of our weekend extravaganza we usually get pedicures as a way to make it extra special for Emma, who is now 11 years old.  Last year I realized that if we got our pedicures at a beauty college it would cost $12---less than half the cost at a nail salon.  Being cheap, I decided that the college was the way to go.  After all, it wasn’t about the quality of the pedicure for me, but rather the experience of getting pedicures with my daughter.  Last year we had a great time at the beauty college, so we decided to return to the same place.  As we walked in, we were greeted by the student at the front desk and told to wait for the students who would be doing our nails to come and get us.  When our apprentice-pedicurists came to show us back I immediately suspected we were in for a good story.  The girl who was going to be doing my nails looked sweet and shy, but the girl assigned to my daughter did not look sweet.  Or Shy.  She looked like a bulldog who has just been kicked in the chops.  It’s true that half of her head was shaved, yes, but the part that worried me wasn’t the way she looked, but rather her demeanor.  As she stared us down, with hands on her hips and pierced eyebrows raised, I felt like a little girl who had done something very bad and now needed to pay the pierced and shaved lady for my wrongs.  The tone of disappointment in her voice made it feel like she was accusing us of coming in for pedicures.  I thought perhaps that she hated doing pedicures and she was stuck with us, but later found out that she’s the best nail tech at the school.  A line from  the movie Elf went through my head about a hundred times while we were sitting there…”She’s an angry elf!”

As the pedicures began, my daughter, raised in a small town where you don’t run in to as many angry little elves per se as in the city, looked at me with large eyes that asked if she should be worried.  I gave her a comforting glance that bespoke all of my assurance: that as we get to know this vexed pixie over the next hour we will see that she isn’t angry so much as misunderstood, like a chocolate lava cake...steamed and cracked on the outside but soft and sweet inside.  Emma swallowed her fear and faced that pedicure head-on, like...well, there are no analogies for that, but head-on nonetheless!  I was surprised to find that our shorn friend liked to talk.  I had imagined her to be the angry, sullen type, but was quickly disproved in that stereotype.  We learned all sorts of things about her:  she grew up in the San Francisco area, she had a three year old son, and most importantly that her labor and delivery were at the same time the easiest and the hardest in the history of the world...which is a serious accomplishment when you stop to think of it!  We also began to see that everything she said was accusatory...as in “If you don’t agree with me and nod your head vigorously and smile then I’m going to break your knee caps”.  We came to this crazy conclusion because her most frequented saying to us was “I’m going to kill you”, but said as a filler phrase the way I would use the phrase “Do you know what I mean?” or “So anyway”.  Emma, who tends to be shy around strangers anyway, melted into the pedicure seat, saying absolutely nothing so as to not be noticed or.....threatened.

I felt closer and closer to our pedicurist as she went to great lengths to share intimate details about her labor and delivery, in between death threats, of course.  For example, Emma and I can now tell anyone who is curious how many pushes it took to get the baby out of our nettled pedicurist, how many stitches she received after his birth, and what the stitches felt like...exactly.  She was even kind enough to introduce us to new vocabulary terms and phrases that I had never heard before, but that were graphic enough for even the likes of us to visualize and understand.  To top it off, she even acted out her delivery for us so that we could really feel what it was like to have been there at the easiest and hardest birth in the history of the world…which I thought was really generous...especially seeing that sweet 11 year old Emma has clearly never given birth. It’s wonderful how willing some people are to share their hard-won knowledge! I can honestly say that her reenactment moved things within me.  I really felt like I was the doctor as she, time and time again, told him she was going to slap or kill him, and of course, break his kneecaps.  She especially showed off her acting prowess as she revisited the tender scene describing how she grabbed her brother’s...yes, you read that right...BROTHER’S, arm during the delivery and shouted the “F bomb” at him.  Lucky for us, she chose not to edit that memorable moment, so the actual “F bomb” rang out into our innocent ears.  I was literally speechless through much of that particular depiction...which, again, is really amazing.  If you know me at all, you know that not many things render me speechless.  

In an effort to change the subject to not only cut down on the PTSD that Emma was quickly developing and to also remind the hostile nail painter that her audience included a child, I mentioned that Emma’s twelve year old birthday was coming up and how excited she was for it.  Without missing a beat,  the pedicurist assured her that age twelve was awful, sixteen was worse, and eighteen was a nightmare.  I felt like giving open thanks for this candid commentary because I have felt for too long that we mistakenly make life out to be exciting and happy when deep down we all know that it’s really just a tiptoe through one cesspool after another.  Thanks be to those who are willing to call it like it is to the young and naive!  The subject of shopping later that day then came up and with a defiant stare she asked me if I was going to buy her something.  I quickly assured her that I was.  When asked what exactly I was going to buy her I answered with the most obvious choice: “a crow bar”.  At first she seemed taken aback by my answer, but after a moment of mulling it over she slowly started nodding and told me that she could actually use that.  I thought so.

When all was said...literally...and done, we emerged from the beauty college with our kneecaps still intact, which was my biggest concern, and our nails painted in bright, happy colors.  Yes, we were each twelve dollars poorer, but full of laughter...which kept pouring from our eyes in the form of tears.  Twelve dollars seemed a small price to pay for that, and a story that will be remembered for years to come.  The truth is that our pedicurist has most likely led a much harder life than either of us and probably has a lot of reasons to feel angry and cynical.  I’m sure that when she graduates she will probably become either a great pedicurist in some hard core, shaved head, hell’s angel’s, hostile salon somewhere, an elementary school counselor, a candy striper at a local birthing center, or a hit woman for the mob (this one is actually quite likely due to her newly promised crow bar).  Either way, the world is her oyster and I am sure that she will excel at whatever she puts her mind to.  

Having lived in other, bigger, and more diverse places, I have seen stereotypes of mine go out the window as I have gotten to know people for who they really are.  So often we have preconceived ideas of how people who look a certain way are supposed to act and as we get to know the real person we realize that nobody is one dimensional and everyone has something to offer--including our pedicurist.  Though we didn’t really get an opportunity to get to know her, there were a few human characteristics that came out in the short time we spent together amid the more stereotypical angry swearing “I’m going to break your kneecaps” moments.  One of which is that she loves her son and finds him adorable, which he was--- she proudly showed us his picture.  I can relate to that as a mother.  I can also relate to the fact that childbirth is painful and one heck of a story.  She also is clearly trying her hardest to be a provider for him by attending this beauty college.  That is something I can admire because being a young single mom is more exhausting, more gut-wrenching, more mind-blowingly difficult than the regular “mom-ing” I already do.  I’m grateful that we met up with such a pedicurist on our little weekend getaway because I think it’s healthy for Emma to encounter people and places that are different from what her world usually hands her.  It helps to teach her that the world is a diverse place full of sights, sounds, smells, and reenactments that we are not used to...and that it’s okay for things to be different.   I know that Emma got an eye and an ear full, but she knows a few things that help her to stay grounded:  She knows that she should be tolerant and not jump to judgement.  She knows that she should use clean language.  She knows that her life is full of wonderful possibilities at twelve, sixteen and even eighteen and beyond.  She knows that she shouldn’t  believe everything she hears.  Most of all, though, she knows that when all else fails we should laugh until we cry...and then laugh some more.