If asked what part of my body I like the most, I'd have to say my feet. They are truly handsome devils. Their only major flaw is they happen to have started growing freckles. I don't precisely know when it started, but I now clearly note a triangle of freckles just above the toes. I can live with that, though, since they are so well proportioned - just slightly wider than your average foot, and nice and long, for better balance.

Was I originally going to talk about feet? No. Not as such. But since both Sun Ra and Wanton Hussy talked about foot related things on Monday, I thought, why break the trend. I'll leave that to Betsy, or one of the Wednesday crowd if Betsy happens to mention feet. I had a really great article planned, but sometime between Sunday, when I thought of it while driving, and this moment, when I sad down to write about it, it ran away... born off by feet, no doubt. At least that leaves room for me to talk about my feet... weeeee!

When I was but a wee lad, I encountered no odd house where shoes were not allowed... and that, frankly, was a good thing. For I was the sort of child who never wore shoes. Were tbere some nice home to welcome me inside, with it's clean plush carpets, and encourage me to remove my shoes, well, haha, the joke would be on them. Nothing could have been more exposed to the elements than my soles. Our house was placed at the end of a 300 foot long gravel and asphalt driveway; a driveway I routinely ran up and down barefoot. My soles more resembled blackened leather than human skin. I recently tried to repeat this trek as an adult, and had to stop a mere ten feet down the drive... and this is with a recent application of pure smooth asphalt over the aged gravel (gravel apparently now being declasse). There's something humiliating in the fact that my feet can't stand the brutal torture they used to put up with, something that tells me I'm less of a man, even though it was the child that actually withstood the punishing gravel every time he ran to the mailbox.

Even without their Benjamin Grim like toughness, I still hang great pride upon my feet. It tickles me to no end that I have to find slightly wider shoes, often having to resort to a size 12, just to accommodate the non-traditional width of my feet. I'm sure there's some who find glee in knowing that they can just order up a size X shoe, and know that it'll fit... but not me, Bucko. Give me that guilty pleasure that resides in having to get the phat shoe.

Most of all, though, I love the fact that my feet are the termination of me. When I sit myself down, relaxing, stretching out, toes a waggling - it's the feet, away down there, at the end of my legs, that affirm that I'm at rest. I can see them down there, comfortable after a day of work, shleping me around the town, and as they breath a pleasant sigh of satisfaction at a job well down... I know that everything is right in my little world.