Ok, I wasn't expecting that....

After a long consulting session this afternoon with one of my graduate students, she commented that she liked my fingers.

Since my typical sessions entail sitting at a small desk shoulder-to-shoulder with the student and working through the assignment in question, I wasn't surprised that she had had opportunity to notice my hands, but let's face it: my square palms, stubby fingers, and erractic nails are not exactly model quality, even if you discount for wrinkles and age spots.

I was wearing a new silver filigree butterfly ring that I bought on the cheap a couple of weeks ago and another costume-jewelry ring that I've had for a couple of years—not things of beauty, but the only thing I could see that might have caught her attention.

"My rings?" I asked; she couldn't possibly have otherwise meant my fingers.

"No, your feet," she answered.

Fingers? On my feet? Okay, she is a lovely lady from the Middle East whose English, by her own admission, isn't strong, although her command of the jargon of her discipline is quite good.

But my toes? What could possibly draw her to comment on my toes?

I was wearing a new pair of Dr. Scholl's sandals that I kind of like, and I had recently trimmed and polished my toenails (mostly to hide the bruise under one of them). But I have the kind of toes that people make fun of because only very small children have shorter fingers, and I've pretty much always been able to pick up small objects off the floor with them—saves bending over.

"My toes? Are you saying you like my toes? My polish, maybe?"

"No, the fingers," she insisted. "You have nice fingers."

Turns out that somewhere in this world, toes that lie together as if they fit in a shoe rather than splayed out like a claw are worthy of admiration. Mine only fit in round-toed, double wide shoes, but they do all play nicely together.

But I don't think I've ever been complimented on them before.