Entry 243: The Agony of the Feet

I have whatever the opposite of a foot fetish is.

No, I don’t mean that I have a head fetish. Or even an inch fetish. I mean I have an aversion to feet.

I don’t have phootaphobia. I’m not afraid of feet. And I don’t hate feet; anybody who has them is welcomed to use them as far as I’m concerned. Some of my best lower appendages are feet.

I just don’t like looking at them. Feet are not aesthetically pleasing to me.

And I’m not only referring to injured feet with all sorts of blisters and bunions, callouses and corns. (Why are there so many different kinds of sores associated with feet?) And I’m not talking about just plain ugly feet with hammertoes or toenail fungus or ingrown toenails. I wouldn’t even like looking at the feet of a professional foot model. In fact, I just used Google to find this photo of the feet of foot model Ellen Sirot, famous for having fabulous feet, and I am feeling a bit queasy.

I wish people wouldn’t wear sandals. Seriously, keep your toes to yourself. And stop wearing nail polish that calls attention to them. I’m already painfully aware that your feet are naked; there’s no reason to paint your toes a garish blue so they can yell at me, “Hey, look at us!”

And, by the way, it’s not just your feet I don’t like; I’m not thrilled with mine either. I sometimes think I subconsciously became overweight so I can’t just glance down innocently and accidentally see them. Oh, and please don’t try to give me a foot massage; you’re certainly not going to get one from me.

Four decades later, I am still haunted by the scene in The French Connection when Gene Hackman accuses a guy of “picking his feet in Poughkeepsie.” They didn’t even show any foot-picking in the film; just the mental image was enough to almost get me to puke in my popcorn.

I know I am not alone in my foot aversion. If you Google it, you’ll get many hits of people describing their affliction. There’s even a name for it: I’m a misopodist. That seems appropriate, since I also don’t like miso soup.

I have been reminded of my misopody by an email I received recently from WordPress, the site through which I run this blog. I occasionally get email from them to tell me that someone liked one of my posts. In this case, the message was:

Toemailer liked your post on The Upsizers. They thought Entry 239: On Father’s Day and Bologna was pretty awesome. You should go see what they’re up to. Maybe you’ll like their blog as much as they liked yours!

As you might expect, I’m usually happy to receive these notices, if for no other reason than to find out someone I don’t know personally is reading this blog. And I do sort of feel an obligation to “go see what they’re up to.” But in this case, there was that name: “Toemailer.”

I took a deep breath. “Be brave, Mark,” I told myself. “You can do this. Maybe their blog isn’t about feet after all. Perhaps…oh, hell, what else could it be about? Suck it up, coward!” And I did. it. I clicked on the link.

OMG!

I was just about slapped in the face by this photo.

Then I stifled my gag reflex long enough to read this:

Hi and welcome to toemail! We are Quillan and Angela and we created this blog in 2010 after deciding it might be fun to do a mail-in photo blog based on the name toemail, after one of us made a typographical error which resulted in that word.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Yes, it was my worst nightmare. An entire website devoted to pictures of people’s feet!

Well, Quillan and Angela, I’m sure you’re very nice people, but please forgive me if I never visit your site again.

Now, excuse me while I go throw up.

See you–agghhggg–soon.