My Podiatrist, My Interrogator

My podiatrist has lots of questions. None of them concern my feet. 

He asks questions in rapid succession from the moment I set foot in his office to my last steps out the door. He wants to know about my life, my family, my schooling, my retirement, my shoes, my socks, our family business, my favorite movies, and how I am celebrating each holiday. I am expected to answer a litany of questions while he works on my feet.

He even touches on the two subjects everyone knows to avoid: religion and politics. Getting the third degree from this well-meaning, boundary-defying man is exhausting.

But is he really that well-meaning? At our last encounter, I had been fasting for a blood test and missed my morning coffee. I tried explaining this to him, but he just barreled through with more questions. “What do you mean you don’t remember what you did this past weekend?” he demanded. I didn’t want to talk, but he kept asking away.

“I won’t be taking any further questions,” I announced.

He kept going with the personal questions and I became agitated and cut him off. “I’d like to talk about my feet,” I insisted.

“OK,” he reluctantly agreed. He always seemed depressed when I asked questions about my feet as if that deterred him from his real purpose.

We then got into a spat—our first—in which I told him I had other priorities than my toenails and didn’t want to spend any further time applying a solution that would take a year to get results. He told me my foot health was important and that 30 seconds a night was not too much to ask. This went on until he finally relented—by asking more personal questions.

I told my sister-in-law Janice about all this. With typical acumen, she explained that this guy was low-key obsessed with me. It all clicked into place. There was a passive-aggressive quality to all the questions that made me insane.

With my designer shoes and socks, husband, and sometimes fabulous gay lifestyle, I must seem like some exotic bird to this pious square from my old neighborhood. But other than prior geography and my feet, he and I have nothing in common—I do not relate to his love of sports, automobiles, the TV shows he watches, the music he references, or his holiday- and American flag-themed neckties.

I am sick of being interviewed while ostensibly going to his office for foot care.

I’ve decided it is time to break up with my foot doctor. There are other ones in town.

I won’t be taking any further questions.