Oh, doctor!

I apologize if you have heard this already.

This evening, during my regular regimen of alternately milling about my apartment aimlessly and sitting on my duff watching television, I noticed that the bottom of my right big toe was a little sore. Not sore enough to really qualify as discomfort – more an annoyance than anything. I pulled my foot up to investigate, and, after brushing away the dust and crumbs and cat hair that coated the bottom of my bare foot, I discovered that the source of the irritation was a small slit, about a quarter of an inch long by my measurement, right through the meaty part of the toe, just above the joint. A slit. I examined it a bit more closely, and while it was certainly no more than a millimeter wide, I discovered after prying it open slightly that it was at least three millimeters deep. But there was no blood, no pus, no discharge of any kind coming out of it; it almost looked like it was supposed to be there. It was a bit like a tiny smile.

I applied the usual disinfectant ointments and bandaged it, and have walked around like a goon for the rest of the evening, trying to keep that toe from hitting the ground when I walk. While I was taking my nightly shower I thought I might want to give it a good cleaning, and so I gave my toe a good scrubbing with my tasteful pastel green bath sponge. However, a small portion of the sponge, clearly weary from its participations in other such scrubbings, clung around my foot as I pulled it back, and consequently I lost my balance, fell over backwards into the tub, and bruised my bottom. The shower gods had a good laugh over that one. The sponge gods were not pleased, nor were the bottom gods. The toe gods were busy trying to figure out whether the sore was some sort of tapeworm cave, and did not take note of the incident.

Unrelated and gratuitous attempt to get a song stuck in the reader’s head:
Who’s tripping down the streets of the city?
Smilin’ at everybody she sees?
Who’s reachin’ out to capture a moment?
Everyone knows it’s Windy.