Dear Pedicure Teacher,
I’m getting a pedicure at the moment. It was a long time coming. I have a feeling I’m not the only teacher in need of a eucalyptus soak.
There’s a rolling cart beside me filled with various items: three different square bottles of bath beads, some tweezers, a cheese grater contraption, a buffing block that looks a lot like a teacher’s eraser, various hues of nail polish, and those little, toe thingies that I'm sure have a proper name, but I don’t know it.
The last item I spot is a disinfectant pouch filled with gauze and Band-Aids. Suddenly, I am anxious. I hope to God we don’t need any of those items in the next thirty minutes.
The lady scrubbing my feet is wearing a Louis Vuitton mask and appears to be in her late 60s. I would ask how long she has been doing this kind of work, but her English is broken. I’m guessing she’s dipped and scrubbed a lot of toes though. The disgusted look on her face tells me my feet are headed for the wall of shame. I bet they have a bulletin board in the back room of "worst toes." If so, I deserve to be the lucky winner of a pity package.
Speaking of luck, the lucky teachers who just finished their last day of school are about to hit up the beach like a pack of wild dogs on a Christmas ham. I sure hope their toes are ready for the sand.
The unlucky teachers still chained to the calendar waiting for June will see those social media, beach posts and lament the school year that will never end.
And neither group will stop to consider the myriad of other jobs where summer is nonexistent.
They say the last few weeks of the year are the hardest for teachers. I have found this to be true. For high school teachers, once tan lines appear, prom kicks off, and yearbooks arrive, you can hang up the cleats on teaching anything at all.
Kids are done. Teachers are done. Somebody pass me a hot towel.
It’s funny how kids arrive in the fall all shiny and polished like a pair of freshly groomed toes, but by the end of the year, they are scruffy and chipped. Maybe teachers are too. And they should be, we’ve walked a lot of miles together, but the marathon school year is ending, or has ended, for some.
For teachers, a time of pampering and relaxation is well within reach, but for the nail tech, her busiest season is just getting started.
So, let’s try to keep this in mind as we are heading out to the waterpark or the beach this summer, and let’s give our nail techs what we wanted at our busiest times: patience, kindness, and flexibility.
And just for the heck of it, why not go ahead and throw in a big tip as well?
-CDB