My, what straight toes you have!

"My, what straight toes you have!"  So commented a friend the other day as Marash Girl was trying on holiday shoes at a shop in Framingham. Marash Girl thought for a moment.  "Why are my toes so straight?"  And then she remembered.  Her shoes always fit perfectly.  Why?  Well, it's kind of a long "Hnamiyagan" story.  Aunty Varsy Basmajian (Auntie Bea's sister  --  Aunty Be a was married to Marash Girl's father's first cousin) was married to a man who owned a shoe store in Waltham, a shoe store that all of the Armenians would frequent. . . And in that shoe store was a shoe x-ray machine, "the shoe-fitting fluoroscope", where parents could not only see clearly whether or not their children's shoes fit properly, but children could while away their time, standing at the machine, wiggling their toes (Lord willing they still have them -- the toes, not the shoes) and fighting over who got to use the machine next!

N.B. Marash Girl's parents never stinted.  When their children's toes started hurting, her parents took the children (and their toes) to the shoe store to buy a new pair of shoes, a pair of shoes that fit!