Walking in L.A.

We had some joke in college about my friends calling me Patch, because we figured it was only a matter of time before I ended up with another clutzy eye injury. (I like to think it was also because I'm a Raiders fan to the core, but it wasn't.) Really, you can't argue with hard facts.

But lately I'm starting to realize that my toes are my new most vulnerable area to injury. In the last year, I haven't had much undamaged-toe time.

Last summer, there was the matter of the Half Dome hike, during which I managed to bloody one toe after not cutting the adjacent toenail short enough. And I ended up with two unsightly black-and-blue patches under my big toenails that took nearly a year to grow out fully.

Then in Mexico, wearing skimpy flats, I accidentally made contact with the back of my travel partner's shoe, resulting in a baby toe that turned all the colors of the rainbow. Nonetheless, I vowed I would shove my foot into a fin for snorkeling even if it meant I had to cut the offending toe clear off. Nothing was going to keep me from being face down looking at turtles in the Caribbean, and nothing did (although a vicious sunburn necessitated a tank top over the bikini, but that's neither here nor there on the toe topic).

And most recently, there was the Grand Canyon hike, which, because of the intense, all-downhill grade for the entire first day, led eventually to a giant blister under one of the big toenails. A blister that would pop while I was minding my own business a week later, and when I was not prepared for, ahem, the flood. When I eventually took the polish off, it was clear that I would lose that toenail sooner or later, because instead of being transparent, it was opaque white. But it hung on, and I dutifully kept it polished and groomed.

Flash forward to last weekend, up in San Francisco, where I was enjoying a Korean-style massage until I gasped during the aggressive foot-massage part. Look, I knew I would lose that toenail eventually, so I wasn't as worried about that as I was about the post-traumatic stress syndrome I would have caused the poor masseuse if she ended up with my big red-painted toenail in her hand on Labor Day. Still it hung on.

But not for long. Wednesday, it finally gave up the ghost. At work. So I went straight to the nail salon on Sunset Boulevard during an essential impromptu lunch break, and got a prosthetic. It looked pretty good and convincing, but apparently the acrylic was too thin and it started to loosen at an inopportune time as I sat in five-inch open-toed sandals in a corner booth at Trader Vic's at the Beverly Wilshire late on Friday night. Not cute, people. Not cute.

Back to a different salon on Saturday for a better version of the acrylic replacement, before hitting the MTV Video Music Awards event circuit, where it is not appropriate to show up and represent your magazine with nasty feet. Two years the pedicurist said she worked on perfecting the toenail-replacement technique she was using on me. Two years! Only the best for my problematic phalanges.

Anyway, all of this is to say that toe is the new eye in my injury proneness. It's only a matter of time before the next incident, I fear. Thank heaven for modern pedicure science.