I don’t remember ever hearing anyone refer to the human foot as “splendid”. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; but feet? Come on!

Admittedly, the foot’s design is quite amazing. Filled with 26 tiny bones, it is able to absorb enormous pressures as we go about our everyday routines of  walking and running and stumbling drunk into alleyways. Not to mention reducing the need to land on our heads as we show off our skills on the backyard trampoline.

But for all its usefulness, the foot is a goofy looking appendage. Unlike the hand, which is issued in one basic design, the foot comes in myriad forms. There are wide feet with short, apparently non-jointed toes which don’t touch the floor when standing straight up (but will touch the floor when keeling forward into an alleyway drunk) and are barely discernible from those of a duck. There are feet with long, many jointed toes which retract like string onto a yo-yo (an uncomfortable procedure while wearing ski boots).

Speaking of footwear, the are open toed shoes which do nothing more than display the front of your foot akin to a fist full of flesh-colored crayons.( Unless you are wearing toenail polish…then it can look like a fist full of multi-colored crayons).

And then, for some baffling reason, there is toe jewelry. Toe rings, to be precise. Really? You think this is attractive? Toe rings will never be practical until the human being evolves apposable  big toes enabling the ability to diddle with the ring  in the same fashion our wives do with their wedding rings when they are considering divorce.

Foot odor. Ta-da! I’ll bet you were wondering when I would address the elephant in the room. Foot odor is caused by bacteria reacting within the sweat our feet produce. There are about 250,000 sweat glads in the average foot (fact)… (give or take 1,000 and depending on how many fewer or extra toes you have and the sales tax rate in your area). Feet produce a bunch of sweat, which normally evaporates or is wicked off by sweat-socks. Each foot produces 425 gallons of sweat on an average day (unconfirmed). One cup per day has been confirmed, but I am unable to find the size of the cup the research references.

Oh well.