Authors Note: I don’t speak Vietnamese, so I put the translations in italics in the story.

I guess it’s what I get for being cheap and stubborn. It rained on Thursday and I noticed that the gutters were clogged. The weather had cleared by Saturday, so that morning I hauled out the ladder and climbed up there to do that simple task myself. Nothing on a one-story house that you can’t reach with a ten-foot ladder, so it’s easy, right?

Sure, up to the point where you factor in the soft ground and a septuagenarian me sliding sideways into the azaleas. At least they weren’t roses. The bushes only partially broke my fall and I put my hand out to keep myself from face planting. I gave up on the chore, promising myself that I’d look up a gutter cleaning service and put the ladder away. My right wrist was sore, but I didn’t think anything of it for a couple hours. By lunchtime my wrist was in screaming pain with every movement and getting worse by the second. It was my right hand, and being right-handed, that made it damned inconvenient. Still, I tried to tough it out.

I finally gave up around mid-afternoon and drove up the road to the doc-in-a-box and had them look at it. The doc poked at it a little and then she sent me for an x-ray. I could see the diagnosis on my own. I’d cracked a bone in my wrist. They taped me up good and sent me home to keep ice on it for the rest of the weekend, making me promise to call my regular doctor and get a cast put on it. They were also kind enough to write me a prescription for some painkillers to get me through to Monday. I picked up my scrip on the way home and spent the weekend floating on painkillers with my feet propped up and an ice bag on my wrist.

I called my regular doc first thing Monday morning and they squeezed me in just after lunch. I came home sporting a cast that was going to stay on for at least six weeks. He’d look at it every week or so to see how I was healing up. It quit hurting now that it was immobilized but it was still a nuisance for very-right-handed me to do everything with my left hand. I muddled through, mostly. Some things I had to let slide. The house and yard were looking sad by the end of the second week, and I had a growing pile of dishes I couldn’t hand-wash. Being cheap and stubborn, I decided to just wait and deal with it once the cast came off.

What I didn’t count on was my toenails. My toenails had needed a trim before I fell off the ladder and now, in week three after the fall, I could barely walk. I worried that they were becoming ingrown, so I called the doctor’s office to ask them how to deal with it. Their answer was that I could come in for an appointment and let a nurse treat me or find a nail salon and get a pedicure. They told me it was about the same price as my co-pay would be and the salon would take care of my fingernails while they were at it. I asked the girl if she had any recommendations. She told me the name of a salon close by that she frequented and added that she often saw men in there. That reassured me it wouldn’t cause a stir for me to go in.

Figuring that most women would get their nails done later in the week so they’d look good for the weekend and the coming week, I hobbled into the salon on Tuesday morning. There were a few clients there, all of them women, but the place wasn’t busy at all. None of the customers looked at me like I had two heads, which was reassuring. I explained my needs to a cute Vietnamese girl at the front, whose name tag said her name was Hannah Phong, and she told me that they would take good care of me. I guess she noticed that my fingers were also in need of attention and suggested a manicure as well as a pedicure. My fingernails were getting into the realm of that old Joe Ely song that goes, “I keep my fingernails long, so they click when I play the piano,” and I was feeling sorry for myself anyway, so I went for it.

Ten minutes later I was perched in a chair with magic fingers kneading up and down my backbone while I soaked my feet in a ten-gallon version of a hot tub. There was a big screen TV across the room with ESPN Sports Center tuned in, and I was feeling much better about life. I was honestly wondering why more men didn’t do this! All I was waiting for was someone to come out and trim my nails. I could hear the discussion going on in the back. It seemed like they were drawing straws to see who would be working on me. The discussion got louder as it went on and finally got to the point where I could hear what was being said. I’m sure that the girls would have carried on a more discreet conversation had they known I speak Vietnamese.

A little background on me might be useful at this point. My name is Donald Hall. At the time of the story, I was seventy-five years old and retired from a career in the city zoning and planning office. Shortly after Kennedy was elected President, I joined the Army and ended up serving a couple of tours in Viet Nam as a translator. Our military involvement there changed drastically after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and I knew I didn’t want to be there anymore, so I didn’t re-up for another hitch, and got myself a job back home with the city. Later, when immigrants from ‘Nam started coming to the US, I dusted off my translator skills and helped local government agencies get them settled. It kept me busy for a while.