Do you ever stop and think about the design of the human body – like, really think about it? It starts to get super weird, especially when you start drilling down into the details. Take feet, for example. They’re such a cool solution for walking upright on our hind legs. In essence, they’re also fleshly flippers with stiff globules on the ends, five apiece. And they’re remarkably ticklish for something made to be ground into the earth by our body weight.
That’s my hot take, anyway. I’m sure you could put it more eloquently than that. Someone like a podiatrist certainly could, but then maybe a podiatrist would be so familiar with feet they’d be unable to see them in this light. Honestly, there’s probably enough weirdness going on in that profession as it is, between fitting orthotic sandals and diagnosing common foot conditions. Cheltenham has a podiatry clinic; maybe I’ll stop by and ask what it’s like.
Seriously, though – when was the last time you checked in with your tootsies? I’m sure there are plenty of people who go through life barely registering their feet. I might not be a foot specialist, but at least I’m not completely oblivious to what’s going on down there. My feet get a fair amount of attention, as it happens, but that’s only the case because my yoga teacher brings it up every class. “Ground into your feet,” he says. “Ask them how their day was.”
I think he’s just being funny. I hope so, because I’m not in the habit of conducting small talk with my feet. Maybe he means it in a figurative sense. Regardless, it does make me sit up – well, stand up – and pay attention to my stepping beans. If it wasn’t for this prompting, I’d probably be flapping around without an ounce of foot consciousness, just like every other fool.
They really are a nifty little mechanism, though, and we should all be doing what we can to take care of our foot health.