A Day in the Life of...My Feet

My relationship with my feet has been a fairly tumultuous one. They were a source of great angst for me in my youth because they were, ...well..., BIG.

Not Bigfoot BIG... ...more like hobbit BIG.

BIG enough to make shoe shopping an uncomfortable experience.
It wasn't until I went away to college and I actually had to use my feet for something other than kicking my little brothers (who totally deserved it 98% of the time) that I started to appreciate how helpful feet can be, no matter what their size.

I was car-less my first few years of college so if I wanted to go somewhere I had to "hoof it". (And why exactly are all college campuses located on the top of leg-punishing hills? Is it some kind of thinning of the herd, survival of the fittest thing or do the people who design and build colleges just hate college students?) My feet became even more dear to me while serving my mission in Canada (where car-fasts were almost as common as blizzards) and my 18 months trying to save Canadian souls put some serious mileage on my own soles that had in fact been worn out in the service of my fellow beings.
After my feet were released from their mission (and after a brief thawing-out period) they went to work helping me jump through the countless hoops of the teacher certification process. They had to endure another hilly college campus, an over-crowded junior high, and a high school classroom filled with sweet natured but scary looking teens before finally earning the striped socks and pointy-toed shoes of a professional educator. My feet continued to support me as I left home to start a new life in this cute little farm town where my concept of "formal footwear" changed drastically and I learned to kick up my heels dairy-style.
Now my once neglected and despised feet are my cherished yet somewhat abused partners in the race between lessons that is my life. Take Wednesday, for example. My feet and I awakened to the sound of some foot-stomping country music when my alarm went off just before 5 a.m.
Of course, at "just before 5 a.m." my feet are not exactly in top stomping form. Most of the time they just want to kick the backside they are attached to for subjecting them to this torturous schedule. They would prefer to stay tucked in my warm bed, wrapped in the fuzzy socks a particularly sweet 7th grader gave me for Christmas last year.
After stubbing a few toes trying to get dressed without actually having to wake up enough to open my eyes, my feet and I met up with Elizabeth and her feet to pound about three miles of calorie-burning pavement.
After helping to slim down the same backside they wanted to kick, my feet slipped into their "teaching shoes" for nine and a half hours of walking the thin line that separates my "active learning environment" from the ever-threatening boarders of "total chaos".
After school my feet had to rush to to "walk through" my mission preparation lesson before running over to the institute building where I helped the future elders and sisters learn how to "de-feet" the temptations thrown at them on a daily basis.
Finally, when the sky was as dark as it had been when we'd first left home that morning, my feet and I were able to get comfortable and unwind while watching Project Runway....I mean "the news" or "PBS".

Somehow my loyal feet even managed to get me to my bed sometime after Heidi declared Jerell the night's winner. One of these days I am going to have to reward them with some foot-spa and pedicure time, but I'm afraid that will have to wait until this break-neck pace of life becomes a footnote in the history of this girl and her podalic pals.