Fucking Bunion: A Foray Into Foot Ailments

Bunion rhymes with onion. It's one of my favorite words in the English language. It's both evocative and hilarious.

Not only does my toe hair sparkle in this light, I've got fucking bunions.

Yet, until today, I didn't know exactly what a bunion is. Of all the billions of things I've looked up on Google, bunion has never been one of them. It's hard to say why that is.

The bunion thing started thus: One of my co-workers just had a minor foot surgery. She's been padding around in one slipper and one shoe. The slipper is pink and a little bit fuzzy. It's really cute, trust me. So I overheard her telling someone it was a corn.

It wasn't that I was trying so hard to listen-- it's this crap open-plan office we've been poured into. The open-plan office (a nice way of saying "fucking cubicle corral") is just one of the many injustices my job has recently foisted upon us, things that have started to make me hate my job a little bit because one of the things I've always liked about my job is that they they don't treat the prep teachers like crap in the hierarchy of shit that everyone clings to so desperately.

Robots don't need air or toilets.

We've suddenly gone from "respected professionals" to inhuman English teach-bots who don't need boring shit like more than two toilets for 50 people or books or planning time or air in their classrooms. I don't mean A/C. I mean air. The kind you breathe and makes you sick in certain forms. The air thing is a boring story involving Turkish construction and fake ventilation systems and 20 people in a tiny room.

Not this kind of corn.

Anyway, I didn't know what a corn is either. All I know is that the knobs on the sides of my feet have been growing and they remind me of corn. So I asked this co-worker about whatever was on her feet and she described it and it sounded all right, bumpy and sore and that was enough for me. Then I asked her if their removal was covered by insurance and she said it was. Then today she wasn't limping anymore, and I was all, "Wow, amazing recovery time! I should be able to fit that minor surgery into my life, which I no longer have because I have to work all the fucking time because the administration just took a big old dump all over us!"

This kind. Fucking ew.

So tonight I looked up "corn" on Google. Turns out a corn is just a really big callous. I have loads of those. If really big callouses are corns, my pinky toes are like 85% corn. If I had them removed, I wouldn't have pinkie toes anymore. I'd have pinkie sprouts.

Then I looked up "bunion." Then I giggled a bit because bunions are funny and rhyme with onions. Then I found out bunions are weird bony growths and not a snap to have off. Since I don't wear high-heeled or crampy shoes, it means my bunions are genetic.

It's cool. My grandma had wonderfully knobby feet. I got her feet. And her weird hands that can do the weird finger locking thing. LE has her creepy thumb that bends all the way backwards. So does my brother. Genetics are cool.

I'm thankful I got my grandmother's feet, bunions and all. There are a lot of other things I'm thankful for, too numerous to mention and anyway, it's my bedtime. I have to get up fucking early to go to work.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Teachers' Day.