Touché

Recently, I've developed a new affliction. It's right in line with my unusual diseases, so I'm not too concerned. Either that or I'm putting on a really brave front but am quaking inside. Yes, perhaps that's the truth. But with me and my second-guessing, you'd never know.

I'm totally ignorant when it comes to illnesses, mainly because I don't fall sick very often, and that is always a cause for deep heartache. Who would want to miss all the attention that goes along with minor sickness? I still remember the way I used to gaze forlornly at sick (as in unhealthy) little kids who came to my mother's clinic for medication. My mother the doctor talked really nicely to those kids. Cajoling and loving them right into a necessary injection. They never knew what happened. Sigh. My mother the angel. My mother, kindness incarnate to those little kids who already had a mother of their own to give them love. Those bloody snotty little kids hogged all my mother's attention. Ungrateful weasly beings. Snatching, crapping and marking themselves all over my territory. Oh, those days! The trauma!! Let me take a moment to compose myself...

Ok. So back to this thing, it's a skin problem I think. On the outside of my right foot. The mother saw the thing, felt it, and pronounced the diagnosis. Elephant skin. I'm not joking. That's what she said it is. I swear. It kind of feels hard and dry and scaly to the touch. I even have photographic evidence. (The real elephant is to the left. The right is 'No, this is not happening to me')

See what I mean? I'd do any elephant proud. But jokes aside, it's really sad. As if I needed any more identification with big, grey, hulking, fat beasts. Will it never end?!

Immediately after being diagnosed, I was understandably in a thoughtful mood. Who wouldn't be? I asked the mother how she knew it was Elephant skin. She said it felt like that. A pause. Then I asked her when she'd felt elephants before. She said she does daily. Ahem. I looked at dad and giggled. Of course all this hilarity and good cheer was to diffuse the tense atmosphere of the moment. We're good like that. We diffuse tense moments. But it still didn't make my foot-skin problem alright.

Oh man. Those pics make it look worse than it really is. Look at the furrow-like things on that left one. Totally hideous. Ok, I managed to scare myself all over again. If I hadn't taken those pics with my own hands, I'd have felt deep overwhelming pity for the one who had those things. It's the angle or something, it isn't really that bad. So don't start writing those obituaries yet. And see the vague discolourations on the leg in the right pic... that's the site. Don't ask me how I managed to take a pic of that part like that all by myself. Contortionistic no?

And finally? It's some skin cream that smells like eggs gone bad for me. I forget to use it more times than not, and actually, I think I've lost the tube... but then the offensive thing came on its own, it can as well go away on its own. I'm not catering to something my mother called elephant skin. No way. One fine day in the near future I'm going to wake up to beautiful, unblemished feet and fall in love with their loveliness. Mere payr, kitne sundar, kitne komal...

Related nonsense: Do not ever search for pictures of elephant skin. Don't even click on that link. Seriously. It's not good. Especially the pic called "Experimental butchery of an elephant..." which looks like they're skinning an elephant.

Not so related, but nevertheless cute nonsense: Allapum. That's what my cousin used to call an elephant when he was little cos he couldn't say elephant. It's now our family's official name for elephants.

Related, necessary (non)sense: The title of the post is pronounced 'too-shay'. I've always liked the word.