My Feet Have Turned into An Old Lady's...

...especially the right one. The one where, since I was twelve, I've perked a fungal infection that has taken various guises. As a nubile tweener, I believe it just itched a lot. I remember the nurse at camp giving me chlorine to swab on it. Once into my sweaty, glandular teens, it not only itched, but it peeled. And smelled. Especially since I only ever wore sneakers with wool socks (which was the trend in my day). If I remember correctly, Libby would move my sneakers from wherever they were to the back porch. The smell of fungally feet is unmistakeable, a cheesy, earthy, grime- in-your-toenails odor that can waft upward and outward and is bad enough to gag a maggot.

In my twenties and thirties and, yes, my forties, when I was baring my feet on a regular basis, I used salves and prescription drugs to keep my wayward right foot in check. But now, now that I've been married for decades and I'm as old as I am, I just can't be bothered to wage war with the fungal guys. So I let it slip, and then I look down at my feet, and: the left one isn't bad, but the right one--it looks just like Libby's did in the last years of her life. Horny toenails, scaley, wrinkled--90 year old feet!

And there's no going back, I fear. This, too, I must accept as a fact of aging.