Exercise 04
You are in a waiting room (doctor's office, job interview, etc.). People are sitting more or less in a circle. Describe several of them -- focusing only on their feet! Type of shoes, cleanliness and condition of shoes, toes if they show, how they let their feet rest. Are they quiet or do the feet move? What can you tell about the person from the feet?
Doctors Office
We all
sat in a circle. We were all there for possibly different reasons. I heard some
coughing, but I was too shy to look up from the floor. The one thing I spent
most of my time doing was staring at people’s feet.
Next to me on my left sat a little
boy. This is just an assumption because of the shoes he was wearing and the
size of his feet. Though, I myself can’t deny having wanted my own pair of
spider-man shoes regardless of gender stereotypes. His feet were dangling from
his slender yet pudgy legs, and his feet couldn’t reach the floor. His left
shoelace was untied. The lace lay on the floor about a half an inch folded
over. His shoes were covered in dirt like he’d been running through the mud and
it had dried out like the cracks of a dried up creek bed. Even underneath his
feet I could see small dirt clumps that had fallen to the floor. The laces of
his right shoe looked torn as if he’d been running and caught it in a fence
wire and tugged too hard to get it free. About a half an inch, up from the
bottom of his shoes were clear sections. When he kicked his feet together they
lit up with red LED’s. He made more dirt fall from his shoes every time his
feet met. He was clearly doing it on purpose to entertain himself.
Next to him, on his own left was
his mother. I was only assuming again because of the pink and white vans
sneakers she wore. Her shoe type clearly
marked her age range. She was a young mother with a young child. Her shoes were
tied neatly with white laces. They looked relatively clean despite what looked
to be a permanent marker stain in the shape of a pigs curled tail. It looked as
if she’d tried to wash it off but hardly managed. I could imagine her being
angry with him. It made me sad to think of him being yelled at for his
unknowingly bad deed. “Stop it,” She said to him, to interrupt his fun of
messing the floor with dirt. Her feet weren’t flat on the ground, but slanted
from the toe upward toward the heels that rested on the legs of the chair she
was sitting in. She coughed. I now knew
where the previous cough originated.
On the young mother’s left sat what
I can only assume was an older man. His pants didn’t reach his shoes. I could
clearly see his gray socks with black filled in diamonds and outlined diamonds
in black. It was a repeating pattern around his ankles. He wore black leather
penny loafers, minus the penny. His feet were flat on the floor. He was not in
the least bit fidgety. He seemed very relaxed.
On his left sat his wife or so I
assume. She wore tan Birkenstock’s with white socks. Her socks seemed slightly
yellowed from the normal white. They weren’t at all grimey. Her feet were
pointed just slightly inward, and every now and then she’d pull her feet back
and readjust. Occasionally she’d slip her feet partway out of her shoes, and
leave just her toes touching the middle section right behind the second strip
of leather that normally secured her feet in place as she wore them. She seemed
nervous and bored. I don’t think she liked doctor’s visits very much. I wasn’t
sure if the appointment was for her or for him.
A male nurse came out, and I could
only see his green scrub pants and what appeared to be running sneakers. They
had a small bloodstain on the front upper end near the tongue. I wondered where
the blood came from.
One by one the room began to clear
until it was only I. My eyes kept to the floor. We went into a room, the tile looked clean,
but I wouldn’t have trusted it enough to eat off it. I hate doctor’s offices.
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