You know, for the most part I’m a fairly attractive guy. At least, the sight of me doesn’t cause small children to run shrieking in fear to their parents when I pass them on the street.
Oh, sure, there are portions of me that need some work. I’d like to have something resembling abdominal muscles, rather than a somewhat hairy expanse of flab. I don’t want a six-pack, necessarily; I’d be happy with a single can dangling from the empty pull-rings. I could stand to lose about 20 pounds. I wish my body wasn’t quite as hairy as it is.
On the whole, though, I’m not that bad from a physical standpoint. That is, until you get to my feet.
Rare is the person who thinks their feet are attractive. But mine have to be some of the most butt-ugly feet ever to tread the face of the planet.
In the first place, they’re really big. Disproportionately so. I’m around 6’1", and I wear a size 13 shoe. My foot is slightly more than a foot (12 inches) in length. This makes for a cute little double entendre when people comment on my feet; when they say “Your feet are huge!” I usually come back with “Yes, they’re my second-largest extremity.” However, my wife has taken to laughing hysterically whenever I say that, so I might phase that little conversational gem out of my sparkling repertoire of snappy comebacks.
My feet are also somewhat hairy. I don’t have quite the pelt on top that those cursed Hobbits have, but there’s more than a bit of keratinous outgrowth gracing the uppers of my peds. I even have a few stray strands of hair on some of the knuckles of my toes.
Ah, yes. The toes. Crowning glory of the feet. Let’s discuss toes, shall we?
We’ll start with the least-disgusting aspect. My toes are prehensile. I can pick up coins, pencils, small animals, and old issues of National Geographic with my toes. I can also spread my toes out so that none of them on the same foot are touching each other. I can curl them under to make (for lack of a better term) a fist with my feet. Which, now that I think about it, sounds like a bad kung-fu film. (“Have you seen Fists of Fury yet?” “No, but I watched Fists of the Feet last night.”)
Let’s move on to something semi-disgusting (at least to my lovely wife). I can point my foot, extend my toes, and wiggle them in such a way that a crunching sound is made near the top of my ankle. It sounds something like cutting into a head of lettuce with a dull knife. I’m probably doing irreparable damage with this maneuver, and when I’m 46 my feet will simply fall off my legs. On the plus side, I can win any argument with Aries28 thanks to this ability:
Her: “Why on earth did you spend $143 at the grocery store?”
Me: “We were out of Mayfield Turtle Tracks ice cream.”
Her: “I swear, you are the most irresponsible, dunderheaded …”
Me: (crunchcrunchcrunch)
Her: “Ahhhh!” (runs away)
So I’m willing to risk the prospect of my feet falling off.
But the ultimate, the coup de grace, the Grand Guignol of grossness that is my feet, are my toenails.
Sweet mother of Dr. Scholl, my toenails. When I was a teen, I had a horrible, horrible case of athlete’s foot. Somehow this affected some of my toenails. A couple of them actually look semi-normal. The rest look like they’ve got cataracts. Big cataracts. Cataracts that would blind a visionary.
The nails are split, horny, knobby clusters of matter. I look at the toenails of other people and sigh longingly. (No, I’m not a pervert.) I point to the feet of others and say to my toenails, “See, that’s what you’re supposed to look like. Round, smooth, pink and perfect. Not dried-out, disgusting slabs of protein.” And I will hold my feet up, so my toenails can get a good look at their role models. For some reason, people don’t stay near me very long when I have this conversation with my toenails.
Honestly, it’s like God made me down to the ankles, and at that point the five-o’clock whistle blew and He said “Ah, the hell with it” and sent me on my way.
I have hellspawn feet. Does that qualify me for any special government grants or anything like that?
