Skinny Pins

On Friday evening I went out for a drink with people from work. Suddenly, from nowhere, a colleague poked me in the knee and said "Ha, you've got skinny legs, haven't you?".

I paused. "Yeah, I suppose I do" I muttered, eventually.

He laughed, and then seeing that I wasn't laughing quite so heartily, proceeded to roll up his the leg of his pinstripe suit and gesture towards his own knee. "Look at my legs though!" he guffawed in what I could only assume was supposed to be a tone of reassuring solidarity. "They're skinny too!"

This information, despite being true, did not make me feel an awful lot better. He continued, much to my dismay.

"It's so funny to see you walking around! Such skinny legs and such big... hair!"

Later on I relayed this conversation to Ben. He shook his head sadly. "You know he didn't mean hair, don't you?"

I knew. I was not then, nor am I now, impressed.

Cut to two days later. I had been out for a Sunday afternoon stroll to try to cheer myself up. The previous day I had exhausted myself by doing a cheerleader party in the morning, then a wedding gig in the evening, and I had woken up feeling low and a bit lonely. Dreading the temp job the next day, tired and flat and upset. I had moped forlornly about for a bit, staring out of windows, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead and the like. Then I was struck by the realization that I was wasting the only day off I was going to have in twelve days and promptly decided to Pull Myself Together.

I bravely ventured out into the sunshine to wander around Brixton. I perused the endless musty rails of the charity shop at the end of my street, sat in a café for a bit with a book and watched other people wind their way through their Sundays. On my way home to get ready for the jam session I had decided to go to that evening, I was standing ready to cross the road. Still in a dream world, but relaxed by my afternoon of lazy solipsism.

Just then a man started shouting and laughing to himself. This, of course, is normal in Brixton. If I walked down the high street without encountering someone talking to themselves (whilst gesticulating wildly, of course) I would begin to suspect that I had slipped into a parallel universe and would call MI6 at once. So I thought nothing of it and continued in my reverie.

Then I realized he was talking to me.

"Hey lady! You wanna get yourself some sunshine on them skinny legs! Ha ha ha ha!"

He laughed the laugh of someone who laughs at the sky, and then continued.

"And a pedicure! Ha ha ha ha!"

My jaw dropped. My reverie flitted away and I was left with only incomprehension.

I crossed the road, mouth still hanging open as if someone had deactivated the springs in my face.

Twice in one weekend have people taken it upon themselves to criticize my (albeit quite skinny) pins. I do not like the word skinny. I am surely not skinny! They are maybe slim, and certainly pale. I cannot help either thing. I am an English Rose, and refuse to succumb to the siren song of the evil tan boxes of death. Or, as Ben put it, "don't go gathering melanomas in UV caskets". I have no time to smear myself in browning paint, either. I should be able to walk down the street without being mocked for my fair skin and lack of leg fat.

It goes without saying that the worst bit was being told to get a pedicure by a homeless man whose own sense of hygiene was, to push the concept of understatement to the extreme, somewhat dubious. My feet, I thought as I stamped home in my flip-flops, are fine! They have nail polish on and are not at all horrible! They are nice feet, they take me places even when they hurt and they look lovely in pretty shoes.

My poor legs and feet. They do not deserve to bear the brunt of such jokes. They run around uncomplainingly as I force them to take me on adventures, as I dash from gig to rehearsal to jam, from jobs one to two to three to four, to see friends and family, jaunt to Manchester, dance to empowering anthems in gay bars across the capital and run run run trying to catch up with the clock whose endless ticktockticks always seems to be running slightly in front.

As the rest of me shuts down in panic, stops being able to think and breathe and understand, my legs and feet maintain my life, taking me from place to place even when the rest of me just wants to stop, rest and sleep.

I hate the people who laughed at my legs. I pity them, really, for I know that my skinny pins will take me further that theirs could ever hope to.