Regarding My Left Foot

Back on the couch with my laptop at the end of a longish, but pleasant, day, I see my left foot over there at a distance and notice that I can't really feel it unless I wiggle it.  So, over yonder is a body part of mine that is apparently awaiting some news from the home front - my brain - to set it into motion.

Feet are odd, you know?  We only notice them when they are tripped, stubbed, tickled or burned.  Poked and stepped on.

Our shoes don't fit and we blame our feet sometimes.  You get a blister and then you know you have a foot.  It speaks to you loudly, clearly and relentlessly.  They bark at you and nag.

Speaking of nags, it reminds me of horses.  Friends of mine, when I was growing up, had horses.  And that makes me think of their feet. The horses, as horses are, were large and heavy and had metal shoes.  Horses get twitchy now and then and take it upon themselves to let loose and kick the bejabbers out of whomever is nearby.  My friends came to school with U-shaped bruises on their legs and feet.  Surprisingly - to me, a no-horse person - they kept their horses even so.  My guess is that if I were to get myself into a cantankerous mood and kick a few plaster hunks out of my wall or launch a friend into the next stall because I couldn't tolerate my clothing any longer, my friend would drop me like a hot rock as a friend.  Likely, I would be arrested.  Horses, in comparison, are soothed, brushed, helped to overcome their twitchiness.  We believe horses to be less intelligent, so we put hard metal shoes on their feet, straps on their heads and feed them hay.  We believe ourselves to be very intelligent, so we sit up high on top of horses, steer them around, but when they get cranky, they fling us into a nearby bush and clomp back to the barn.

Now, at the end of my day, I have a foot over there resting on the arm of my couch as I type here on my keyboard; it's awaiting my signal to perform.  Kick, spring, balance me, trot, run, something. I wiggle it now and again, but I'm so used to it that a wiggle seems very insignificant.  My foot is bored, remote, indifferent, even perhaps cooly resentful of me. 

Since my horse-owner friends in school often showed up with bruises on their feet and legs, I regarded their mounts as dangerous; my approach with horses was to steer a wide berth around them, far out of range of their hind legs especially.  A horse, if you've ever been near one, can be standing still, looking dull-eyed and sleepy.  Droopy.  About to fall over.  Then, they make a long, deep, throat-clearing sound, and basically you don't know what the heck their intention is.  I believe it means, "Watch out, I'm going to kick the apple out of that tree 20 feet away with my iron-clad feet."  You know a horse's hoof is actually a toe, right?  So, they are like ballerinas en pointe, always dashing around on the tips of their toes. Have you ever seen a ballerina's foot?  They're a mess, all over bruises, sores, reddened and abused.  So, if a horse suddenly slams a stool into the next corral, he's dealing with a tippy-toe existence and blowing off some steam.  

I want my foot to do something unusual, now that I'm noticing it.  It seems so far away, over there, beyond my usual reach, especially at the moment when I feel a little stiff and slow.  At an earlier point in the day, say after one or two cups of coffee, I might get an urge to reach down and touch my foot.  You know, bend way over and connect with it in a friendly way.  I'll bet your feet carry on a lonesome existence off in their homeland, south of your knees. If you're like me, you take them for granted, you barely appreciate them, certainly you don't love them and caress them kindly.  I'm done writing now, but I intend to do something nice to that foot and its brother.  I salute my feet! Thanks to them, I can now walk instead of crawl to my bed and go to sleep.