First, I have to say, I know I am in the minority on this, but I hate Forrest Gump. I use that word advisably. Hate-hate-hate it. If someone wants to torture me just lock me in a room and play that movie back to back and I will reveal whatever secrets you want to know. No need for needles or water boarding, I will tell all the first time I see Forrest spewing his wise witticisms while sitting on a park bench. Actually, I h-word almost all of Tom Hanks’ movies. Forgive me Tom, you seem like a nice guy and everything and I really loved you on Bosom Buddies.
And, that “life is like a box of chocolates” is what really gets to me. It is just B.S. Life is not at all like a box of chocolates, well not my life anyway. My life is also not like a bowl of cherries. Well, it is a little like when you have eaten a big bowl of cherries and you feel sick and promise yourself you will never-ever-ever do it again.
Note to readers: Skip the rest of this post if you are squeamish or you are eating your breakfast.
All of my life I have never had a wart. I have, to be honest, have always been really freaked out by them and a little judgmental of people who have them. I know it isn’t nice of me, but I was a wartist. I also have, in the past, been a little judgmental of people who ate Miracle Whip instead of Hellman’s or Best Foods. I guess it all comes down to fearing what you don’t know.
About six months ago I noticed I had this huge callousy thing on my heel that would not go away and was in fact growing bigger by the day. It went from a dime, to a nickel, and to the size of a quarter. I felt sure if I let it go much longer it would turn into the size of a golf ball, tennis ball and perhaps a grapefruit. I finally went to a doctor. I was told that it was a callous that got infected and was advised to soak this thing three x’s a day in hot Epsom salts and then to put a heating pad on it three x’s a day and when not soaking or heating that I should apply an $85 an ounce antibiotic on it. I did. And it did not go away.
I went to the dermatologist and he took one look at this ever expanding thing on my heel that was so large I had given it a name, I called it Bob. So the derm told me that Bob was a wart. He asked if I had ever had one before. I felt as horrified as if he asked me if I ate Miracle Whip. I responded with some incredulous outrage in my voice. “Of course not.” Then he asked if I had been around kids when I got Bob. Sore question #two. Then he asked if I had been under any stress. Bingo. Bob came because I had stress. I was just grateful Bob didn’t bring any of his friends to my stress party.
I was given stinky and foul elixirs to apply two x’s a day to Bob. I was unsure this would be enough so I looked on the Internet for how people had gotten rid of their warts. I felt so ashamed that I was a person with a wart and I was on wart message board. Yet, I read on. I saw that many people had great success at getting rid of warts by applying duck tape to them. So, I tried it. I wore duck tape. As I applied the tape I thought of a transsexual of the evening I had once seen walking down an unsavory street. She/he had fashioned herself a pair of duck tape espadrilles that were at once a fashion statement and a painful way to removed unwanted leg hair in a diamond pattern.
The duck tape did not work. Bob was as big as ever—if not bigger. I went back to the dermatologist and he froze Bob. Bob didn’t like the freezing. It hurt and it caused swelling and made me limp for a few days. But, Bob seemed to dry up, change colour and began to shrink. This is the gross part ( I am warning you). A week after the freezing I took my shoes off to see that the center of the wart was gone and I had this huge hole where Bob used to be. The edges of Bob were still there, hard and dark, and scaly—holding on for dear life to my foot. But, the center was gone.
As soon as I saw this creepy cave like hole in my foot that is large enough for a family of insects to move into I thought that this wound was the perfect symbol for my life. No, not that my life is unspeakably gross. Rather, that the center, the core, is gone and what remains are the edges of me. I still look like me. I can function at a dinner party. I can hold a conversation. For the most part I can do the everyday things of life—yet my center is gone, blown away and all that remains is an open wound where hope, faith, desire, and dreams used to live. And for that reason I believe that my life is like a wart and warts are gross and things that happen to other people. But no, wart happened to me and all of these unbelievable traumas have happened to me—things I thought just happened to other people—and yet I am still here holding onto life.
I, like the place where the wart was, am healing. I can feel the itch of healing in both my heel and in my life. I am starting to have hope that the emptiness will be filled with something else, something other than baby.
As to the Miracle Whip, I bet Forrest Gump ate Miracle Whip and I feel sure he had warts.
