Mutiny of Limbs

Foot Prints In The Sand... photo by Flutterbye8567.

Most people are blessed with two feet that get along. The left foot and the right foot are soul mates, perfectly in good will and cooperation with one another. But Henry somehow ended up with two feet that just didn’t get along with one another. They would constantly bicker and fight, and this caused havoc for poor Henry. He’d be walking to work in the morning, and the left foot, being much more responsible and dependable than the right foot, would be walking straight down the sidewalk towards the office, but the right foot, being much more carefree and spontaneous, decided it would rather go for a swim at the lake and started heading off in other direction. Henry nearly fell to the ground, and people gawked at the man with one leg going down the sidewalk and the other trying to hail a cab. It was only in the most crooked and faltering path that he was eventually able to eek out enough compliance from his two feet to get himself to work.

His hands felt terrible, having to witness the communication breakdown between the right and left foot. They’ve been through tough times themselves, but have worked it out. Multi-limbed coordinated dexterity took a lot of hard work, nobody said it would be easy. Each of the hands sympathizes with a different foot however, which leads to their own disagreements. Spats flare up, like when Henry had to pick his nose, and the left hand said “It’s your turn,” but the right hand says “I had to do it last time!” Henry is nearly exhausted by the end of the day, just keeping all of his extremities under control.

His toes felt helpless and caught in the middle of all this. The little toe thought it was to blame in some way for the feet not getting along, even though the big toe stressed that they had nothing to do with it, and kept saying that everything would be all right. But it wasn’t.

Henry woke up one morning and discovered that his right foot had up and left sometime during the night. He slid out of bed, puts on his left shoe and stares sadly at the right, leaving it cast aside on the floor. He hops around town, searching for his right foot. Finally, in a crowd on the subway platform they spot the right foot attached to the ankle of an older man. They hop madly after it, but too late: they have gotten onto a subway car and disappear into the city.

He resorts to placing an ad in the paper “Man with one left foot, seeks single white foot, approximately 8 ½ inches, preferably mild tempered, enjoys quiet evenings at home, etc…” He gets a wide variety of responses. A right foot shows up one day that used to belong to a baseball player, but that foot is too itchy. Another foot won’t stop fidgeting and spends all day tapping under the desk. Another responds to the ad is from a woman’s foot, with bright red painted nails. Henry becomes too self-conscious when he has to go barefoot. A college football hero’s foot would spontaneously decide to punt houseplants or the telephone across the room. An old man’s foot kept falling asleep. One day another left foot mistakenly shows up, but Henry is so desperate at this point that he decides to give two left feet a try. This opens him up to too many jokes about being a bad dancer.

Finally, he’s home on a weekend moping around the house with his one left foot and his two hands, which still claim they are above all of this nonsense and had seen these problems coming for years, when there’s a tap at the door. There stands his right foot, in an old athletic sock with a big hole in the heel, looking beat up and forlorn, with a stubbed toe and too long of toe nails. They begrudgingly come together again. The toes are ecstatic to see one another, and even the hands fold together complacently, saying they knew the feet would work it out eventually. Henry is so happy, he goes to put on his old shoes and pauses and thinks, this is cause for a celebration. He goes out and buys new shoes, brand new comfortable shoes with plenty of room in the toe, and a nice arch, with a light material that can breathe, and the moment his feet slip inside them he feels a completely contented feeling. His feet are home now, and in these new shoes they dance around the apartment and down the sidewalks, and he wonders how he had been so stupid as to underestimate the importance of good shoes.