Becoming Bigfoot

"Huh," Derrick tapped a finger on the table thoughtfully. "That's one way to enhance your appearance I guess." He leaned back in his chair and took a sip of whiskey.

"Yeah," Josie chuckled. "That's one way to put it."

Derrick set his glass back down on the tabletop and an awkward silence fell between them.

"You know what?" Josie finally spoke up, looking directly into Derrick's beautiful grey eyes. "I've never felt the way I felt last night. I mean, sure, I was drunk for most of it but that's the thing - I stepped out of my comfort zone and you made it comfortable. You made me feel like I was somebody, like it mattered what I had to say. I wasn't invisible anymore. I wasn't the ugly girl sitting alone on the park bench. I was more than unplucked eyebrows and messed up teeth, I was ... beautiful."

Derrick gazed intensely into her eyes with a kind and knowing glint as the rest of the world melted away. Josie searched her heart, trying to muster up the words to continue.

"Even now, I ..." she took a deep breath. "I've completely forgotten that I have hideously huge feet and I'm going to have to wallop them around wherever I go for the rest of my life because they don't matter. When I'm with you it's just here and now."

Derrick nodded sympathetically and reached across the table, taking Josie's hands in his. A tear tracked down her cheek and she sniffled a bit, having freed the weight that was on her chest as he affectionately rubbed his thumb against hers. This is love. He had accepted her for who she truly was.

"Josie, honey. I'm thrilled to know that I make you feel this way, but -- here and now? Here and now you're sitting at a table with your massive - massive feet only barely hidden beneath it. That's the reality you need to live in as you adjust to this change -"

Josie was stunned. "Well, I ... I am adjusting of course I'm just-"

"I'm a man who likes to travel, you know? And be active."

"I can be active!" she choked. Sadness burned in her chest at the realization of where this was all going.

"It was painful just to watch you walk a couple yards to this table, I mean, you're practically crippled by their size, Josie-"

"No, I'm not!" she said sorrowfully, curling her toes and wishing desperately that they would shrink. "I can walk just fine!"

"I'll be honest, I thought you were kind of cute - in a strange homely way, and you're going to find someone who will be okay with your feet but -"

"No," Josie cried and she cringed knowing what was coming next.

"It's just not going to be me."

The words stabbed like hot steel into her chest and she jerked her hands away from his.

"I'm sorry, Josie." With that, Derrick tipped the last swig of whiskey down his throat, slid his chair out, and walked away into the crowd.

Josie wiped the tears off of her cheeks and called Amanda.

"That was quick," she answered. "What happened?"

"Come get me now," Josie sobbed.

"Derrick?"

"I was wrong about him."

Epilogue:

"How do you like them?" Amanda beamed as she waltzed through the front door. She petted at her soft ear lobes that now sported over-sized earrings. The diamonds in the studs were big enough to fit in the palm of her hand and they reflected the light beautifully.

"They're amazing!" Josie replied, lying back on the living room couch. "But they look pretty heavy. The added weight might make your ears even more burdensome, don't you think?"

"Nope!" Amanda waved her hand dismissively. "Check this out." She pulled something out of her pocket. It appeared to be a handful of beige nylon straps that she slid over her head and adjusted around her ears until they popped through the loops.

"Ah! There we go!" Amanda said. "Ta da!" Both of her ears were being lifted and supported by the straps. No longer were her shoulders a seat for her slouching ear lobes. Now her newly pierced lobes dangled and swung about freely, brushing her shoulders as she turned her head proudly. Sure, she must have been relieved to have some help with the weight after three weeks of carrying around those monstrous things, but the straps only pushed Amanda's ears out more making them look bigger and broader than ever. "I made it myself," she said proudly, trying to fix her hair over the straps so that her ear support device wouldn't be visible.

Josie smiled. "Now that you have pretty ears, when are you going to go out on a date?"

"Me? A date? Yeah right," Amanda said, kicking off her shoes on the welcome mat and taking a seat in the recliner across from Josie. "After you got rejected by Derrick I've sworn off dating. It's bad enough having to show my face in public and worry about slapping someone with my dumbo ears. It's impossible to pin them back, I've tried everything! Not to mention my ear wax production has amped up ten fold. I used a rag to clean them every day but the gooey stuff that comes out seems to be never ending."

"And what about that lemon-sized wad of wax I fished out the other day?" Josie smirked.

"We don't talk about that," Amanda said.

Josie looked toward the other end of the couch where her feet were sticking straight up. She eyed their 24 inches up and down with a sort of sadness as she twisted a strand of thin hair. Over the last three weeks her ginormous feet had only grown uglier by the day. The knuckles of her toes were thicker, the veins and ligaments more prominent, and she'd developed calluses on the bottoms. All the layers of polish she'd donned for her date with Derrick had chipped away, revealing thick, yellowish nails that seemed to grow at an impossible rate, and she could barely keep up on their maintenance.

Everyday she spent an hour in the bathroom, bent down and slaving over her poor feet as she tried to trim the new growth off each of her toenails with a pair of heavy duty scissors. It brought her to tears on more than one occasion, and Amanda regularly had to step in and help. She'd gently pick up each toe, the biggest ones she could cup in her hand like a softball, and set to work at clipping Josie's oversized nails as she sobbed and sobbed. To make matters worse, her feet were beginning to put off a rancid footy kind of stench. Amanda rubbed them daily with their bulk supply of maximum strength foot powder, but it wasn't doing much to stave off the sink.

"I'm still really sorry that I've done this to you," Amanda said with a frown. "But those custom order shoes should be coming any day now!"

"I'm not sure why I'd even need shoes. I could probably walk across a heap of hot coals and not feel anything with how thick my calluses have become." She wiggled her feet a bit and tensed with the discomfort. "Oof. And I think I'm growing a few corns between my toes."

Amanda cringed, unable to hide her disgust for Josie's feet, not that she could complain since her ears were all but dripping with wax these days. "Why don't you get them filed and peeled and all fixed up with a pedicure?"

"And stick my giant, smelly, grotesque feet in a poor lady's face at the salon? No thanks. Besides, they probably don't have big enough tools to take care of my problem, and a pedicure might only last a day before my nails grow out again and my calluses thicken back up. Like Derrick said, I'd better get used to this new reality. Even if he had accepted me that night, I don't think he would have stuck with me through all these changes. Who could blame him? I'm disgusting."

"I blame him," Amanda said. "There's no excuse for the way he treated you. Not even if you had hideous feet the size of a house."

Josie gave a flicker of a smile. "Thanks, Amanda," she said. "So, when are you going to submit that lawsuit paperwork?"

"Way ahead of you," Amanda grinned.

She got off the love seat and handed Josie a piece of paper that had been folded in her pocket. It was the petition they'd filled out last week, a petition to sue the pharmaceutical company that produced the pills they'd each taken. On the letter, in big, bold letters were three words that had Josie sighing in relief. Weeks of tension melted off of her as she read it: APPROVED FOR HEARING.