Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Wax be this, wax be that!

We all know what wax is, right?  Well, we do and then we don't.  There are several sides to wax.  No, this is not a gross story about ear wax, so please get that off your mind.  Now that I have said that, let's start off with the prep to my story.  It's really a defense story, but here goes. As most of you know, I'm a dentist and part of my dental school training is learning to sculpt teeth on wax.  I can't recall the name of the wax, but we had different colored wax for that.  As I progressed through dental school, I progressed through the waxes - boxing wax, bite wax, sticky wax, rope wax and I'm sure several others that I can't recall right off the bat.  It has been a while.  So, when someone talks of wax, you can see how I get confused easily.  It has potential to be a complicated topic.  And of course, there's the wax that everyone thinks about; the kind used for candles.

Anyway, my story really is about getting a manicure/pedicure.  I found this local shop where they do the job, but what I liked most about them was that the treatment included the pink paraffin wax.  This shop used it for the hands and the feet.  It feels really great after dipping ones hands and feet in the wax.  Well, as time progressed, I guess to cut costs the shop stopped offering paraffin wax for the feet and soon they didn't offer it at all.  I stopped going there.  I decided I would look for another place that offered wax as a standard part of the manicure; at this point I had given up on any store using wax during the pedicure.  As I looked, I was disappointed.  No one offered it.  What's the deal, I wondered, but I continued on my hunt.

Couple of months ago, I went to a mani/pedi to one of those mall spots.  I took my 12 year old friend with me.  So as they are doing the manicure, I ask if they offer the wax.  They said yes, would you like wax?  I said, yes, I would, how much?  They thought about it and said $10 more.  I said OK.  Let's do it.  I said, also, I know she would like the wax too.  I was mentioning the friend I took along.  As luck would have it, they said they would do it and they were heating it up.  I said OK.  They were finishing her manicure and applying her nail polish and they hadn't done the wax yet.  I asked about it and they said they could do it after.  Most of you know where this story is going, but I was clueless.  I was surprised that they would do it after the manicure.  I usually got the wax before and then we washed our hands and then they applied the nail polish, but oh well.  Who was I to question?  I don't know about this stuff.

They asked me how much wax I wanted, if I wanted the whole arm.  I should have known by then, but no, the light bulb in my brain was still off.  I explained that I only wanted my hands and didn't want any above my wrists.  I was quite confused.  No one ever had me dip my hands in the wax above my wrist.  Whole arm?  What?  Anyway, they finished her mani/pedicure first and took her to the wax.  They told her to sit down and that they'd be right back.  I was getting my nails done nearby but something was not adding up.  Well, the woman came back and applied the wax (the kind to wax hair from your body) to her hands.  It took all that for me to say, "No!  Stop!  We don't want that.  We want the other wax, you know, for the hands?  You dip your hands in it and it makes it feel smooth?"  The woman says, "Oh you mean the paraffin wax?"  Duh!  I said, "Yes!  The pink paraffin wax."  She says, she doesn't offer it there.  She asked if we still wanted our hands waxed.  I said, no!

I was telling my friend's mother this story and she was laughing up a storm.  She threatened never to let her daughter come with me again; she was joking.  She told me to blog about it.  She said it would be funny.  So, I decided to write this blog but I thought I would defend my case.  Honest mistake.  Anyone could have made that mistake and besides, someone like myself, who has dealt with a lot of different waxes is bound to get confused at some point, right?  So, there's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Interesting enough, I went to a spa for a mani-pedi recently and still no paraffin wax.  The woman said that they had to stop using it for hygiene reasons?  Or something like that.  I don't know.  Oh well.  I guess, I won't be searching for it anymore then, if it has been pulled from the regimen.  And hopefully I won't make a total fool of myself again!  C'est la vie!

Until next time,
TTR

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