Heart Full

Having lived in NYC since I was 17 and having passed the bonafide 10-year mark of living here I consider myself a “New Yorker”. I know where to get my morning bagel with my just-right coffee. I felt like I had managed to successfully integrate a continual wonder at living in this awesome city, with the street savvy to remain relatively safe. I’ve been known to boast to my friends all the precautions I take to make sure I don’t get into sticky situations, everything from never leaving with a stranger you just met at the cocktail destination of the night, to never letting your girlfriends leave alone with that stranger either. For the most part my precautions have paid off. Until they didn’t. Coming from Cobble Hill my aunt and I boarded the R train on our way back to Manhattan, and excitedly chatted about our new hair cuts. We were towards the back of the train, but not in an empty car, in fact given it was a weekend / off hours there were a surprisingly good number of people in our car (~10-15). When out of the corner I heard a man yell, ” are you laughing at ME?!!”, I didn’t even register that he was talking to me, even after the second time he yelled it. Only when his bag with sudden violence knocked my-just-right coffee out of my hands, and swung around for a second and third time did it finally sink in. He was hitting me with his plastic bag of trash, and I was paralyzed with fear. My aunt leapt up, pushed him away from me and started yelling at him to leave me the F!#$*!! ALONE! The fog in my mind began to lift with a new fear that he might turn his anger on her — barely thinking I grabbed her hand and told her “we have to RUN!” Not that there was anywhere to go, I discovered after throwing my body weight on the door separating the train cars and frantically turning the knob that the door was “locked for emergencies”.

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I’m not shy about my feet. Although, judging from photos and people’s reactions, I should be. Which is why I’ve been so intrigued by these YogaToes and reviews of them. I’ve been known to slip on some 4″ – 5″ monsters, and pointy shoes that really completed the outfit, but is the ergonomic equivalent of keeping your toes in a fist all day. Plus, I was secretly envious of my friends with healthy handsome feet, especially in yoga. They could really spread their toes, and by covering more ground seemed more stable than I, whose balance is so strained I almost always immediately get foot cramps.

The $49.95 price tag does seem a bit much, given that the contraption is so similar to what I get during my pedicures, and I know those are cheap and disposable. But then this Pampered Toe Therapy by Pedi Egg came up for $7.98 on Amazon. I was just about to order it when I noticed the reviews. Many of which were something awful. Many women complaining of pain, because they had stretched their toes out too much. And these women in general seemed to have larger feet then my size 6.5, so if it was painful for THEM, it might be too much to bear for me. But at $7.98 how could I lose?
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