OH, By the Way, Fred Flintstone Called. He Wants His Feet Back.

An incredible thing happened to me today! I woke up and found out that I had somehow acquired Fred Flintstone's feet where my feet used to be! Is Fred currently sporting my feet? I don't know; either way, I've got his and I don't know how that happened.

My daughter has beautiful feet. She is almost three, and her feet are perfect. They are soft, smooth and there isn't a mark on them. No veins sticking out, no scars; just perfection. 

No odor. No odor!

I think all of us sported near-perfect feet once, too;  maybe only when we were babies; but for others maybe when they were babies and up until they were around 12. I know I once sported perfect feet, but what happened to them?

This is, indeed, a mystery for the ages!

When a baby is born and the docs do the "healthy baby check", they say, "Baby has all ten fingers and all ten toes." They never yell (at least to my knowledge have I heard that they yell) "Baby has all ten fingers and all ten toes on really ugly feet." I don't think this is said often or even at all in hospitals; I'd like to believe that to be true. So, based on my assumption that we all start out with pretty "perfect" feet, how do they end up getting so gnarly looking as we get older? 

Of course there are supermodels who have really beautiful "everything" - including feet - and there are people who are strictly employed as "foot" models. I can't imagine having feet that look so great that you actually get paid to model them; I'd like to get into that club.  But, as I ponder this thought, I know one thing to be true: no body is perfect, and everything is a trade off. Maybe those highly paid foot models have knobby knees or hairy backs. Maybe, given that their feet are fantastic, knobby knees and hairy backs are their cross to bear. "Hey, let's see. I've got a hairy back with knobby knees and a few very long chin hairs; surely there's got to be some way in which we can market our body parts!  Why, YES! Let it be our feet! " 

That's their curse, their "trade off" for being born with (and maintaining) perfect feet. What a sad and lonely life, the life of the hairy-backed and knobby-kneed (but well-paid) foot model!

Maybe I am speaking for myself; maybe I'm alone in the world, but I truly have some ugly feet -   NOW. 

I grew up practically barefoot. My feet were calloused and rough by the time I was nine years old. I swam in the salt water every day, went sailing barefooted, water-skied a few times, walked on the beaches and sand bars all over New England, and was barefoot on sidewalks in our home town, and I climbed trees completely barefoot, and always rode my bike with no shoes on.  This type of treatment clearly could be the cause of some thickening of the skin of the foot, and I've been told that your feet actually widen the more you walk barefoot. Yes, I have wide feet, too, although I don't know if they are wide from being bare outside or if they were wide from carrying so much weight inside! 

The worst part of the life story of my feet? I continue to make them look horrible because I am so klutzy that I continue to break my toes, over and over again. My toes are shades of the toes I once knew. They are stubby and nubby and sadly, the bottom of my feet, when touched by human skin, feel like sandpaper. Sometimes, in preparation for "sandal season" as I call it, I actually paint my toenails. Painting toenails actually turns the original nail color from white to a sickly yellow. Now you are forced to continue to color your toes so they won't even look much worse than they already do, albeit naturally.

In my case, painting my toenails is the equivalent to putting lipstick on a hippopotamus. Neither looks good, neither makes sense. A hippo is still ugly with or without lipstick. Do I make my point?

My questions are this: 1. When did this happen to me?

                                     2. How did this happen to me?

                                     3. Is there a cure for Fred Flintstone Feet? (I mean if there is no way to remedy the "disease," then did Fred at least have the decency to leave his car available for me to drive?) Heck, since I'll never get another foot rub with these feet, and I can't imagine them, while de-soxed, playing "footsie" ever again with someone else's cute feet, there's no hope for me. I will hop in Fred's car, run fast enough to keep the car up to a decent speed, and head out to find Bam Bam. Heck, if I wait long enough for him to mature enough to start dating, he'll never know that my feet are any different than any other girl's "In the Town of Bedrock, there's a place right out of history." 

This might actually work out for me. I'll let ya know how it goes.