Warts

My father is a lawyer. Sometimes he says he wishes he were a history professor, but I think that's just a cover-up for the odd jobs he really enjoys.

For the past few weeks I have been convinced that I have grown a wart on the side of the pointer finger on my left hand. As far as I know I've never had a wart before and I used to think all the kids who had them were repulsive. In elementary school I prided myself in not having any warts, somehow believing that I was of a superior disposition for never having warts. "I"ve never had a wart," I would always make sure to declare when one of my friends would begin to complain about the wart on their foot or their toe. "Really?" they would ask surprisedly, giving me that ultimate sense of superiority about my hygiene as I emphasized it again with a confident, "Nope!"

Even when I spent my high school summers as a day camp counselor, I would quickly investigate which kids had warts and note to never hold their hands. A few times a sweet little Kathryn or Daniel would spend the majority of the day in tears for a variety of possible reasons (missed mother, wet pants, stolen toy, lack of Ritalin) and I would not make any consolations concerning the hands. With a quick flick of the wrist, I learned to shake a kid's hand out from underneath my palm and leave the scene before mayhem erupted.

Now that I look back upon it, though, my uppity attitude about warts could have really just been a cover-up for my ignorance about the world of warts. Many of my friends shared horrifying stories with each other about their wart removal visits to the doctor. After leaving school midday, they would return to an onset of curious peers, "Did it hurt?!" they would ask, unable to stay seated in expectation. "Not at all," the confident, wart-free peer would answer, gaining a sense of confidence that had the ability to bury mine, leaving me unable to come to terms with the fact that maybe I really wanted to have warts.

But now I think I finally have one. My mother thinks I don't (she's even more disallusioned about my family's hygenic superiority than I am) but my father has been right on it. After dinner tonight he dragged out his what must be five year old wart removal kit and began the demolishing process.

After retrieving the kit from the upstairs bathroom, he stumbled down the basement while I sat in the kitchen awaiting the process I have been coveting for so long. I wondered what it will be like. Will there be dry ice? Will it sizzle? Will it be hot or cold? Will it hurt? What if it hurts? Maybe I'm not tough enough for this. Maybe I'm destined to never have any warts because I can't handle the treatment. Damn it! I can never beat the warty people! Not only do they have better stories but they're also tougher!

My father returned from the basement still in search for his magnifying glass so that he could read the instructions on the bottle. They're not in the kitchen either. He asked my mother to read the directions but she couldn't find her reading glasses so after five minutes of reading/magnifying glass commotion, my brother grabbed the bottle and announced what we were to do. Wash, Apply. Wash.

My father took the little brown bottle away from my brother and started to unscrew the cap. Here it comes. He started toward my finger with the application brush.

"Wait. Aren't you supposed to wash the area?" I asked.

My father made a disgruntled sound.

"Dad. Don't we need to wash it?" I repeated.

"Nah," he said as he intently dabbed the solution onto the knuckle of my left pointer finger.

I waited. No sizzling. No smoke. No disappearing wart. He screwed the cap back onto the bottle and announced in a doctorly way that we had to repeat the process daily for as long as needed.

Well maybe it's still a wart then, I thought. If it's not gone yet that still gives it a good chance of being a wart.

"I just don't think that's a wart," my mother said as she grabbed my finger and inspected it, bringing it close to her face.

In an attempt to avoid my mother's doubts, I escaped the room with my still bumpy finger. Maybe it isn't a wart but if it's not, I don't know what it is and I don't think it's going away. It's not a pimple (believe me I've tried popping it and there's nothing in there). But if whatever it is stays there forever, it will always remind me of my false sense of hygenic excellence and my father's passion for odd jobs. Who needs law school when you can remove your children's warts? It most definitely means something to me.