A few weeks ago, we were floating the river down in New Braunfels when I cut my foot. It was early in the day. We’d just put in; I was walking the tube through a low, still, rocky part in my bare feet; those rocks were sharp. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it was bad enough to eventually need a band-aid, and we had a few hours of floating left. So, obviously, I wondered if my foot was going to get infected from the river water and soon need amputation. At which point I checked which foot it was, saw it was the gross one, and said, “Well, at least there’s that!”
I don’t have gross feet, but I do have one gross foot. Toenail fungus, mostly. Started back in high school when I had warts on my big toe and the dermatologist wasn’t getting rid of them so I took it upon myself to wrap said toe in duct tape and athletic tape all summer, only taking it off to clean the sick thing out once a week. It killed the warts, but it also spread the fungus from one toe—the pinky toe—to all five. Disaster. Now, I’m sitting thinking about how it’d be nice if, should I have to have a foot amputated, it was the gross one and not the healthy one. Similarly, how much do I have to run to make my toenails fall off? That’s something that happens to runners, right?
It’s not that I want my foot amputated. I like having both my feet. It’s that if I need a foot amputated down the line and it’s the good one, I’m gonna be extra bummed.
Why stop at one foot?
Chacos, my friend, Chacos. Get some.