Foot Feat

How is it, I'd like to know, that some people's feet age better than others? A few of my same-age friends have never even had a blister on a toe. They can walk ten miles without an one ouch in a morning workout. Other friends have chronic foot aches and pains.

Now that I'm seventy, I am usually OK about wearing practical shoes (well, most of the time I'm OK with it), but once in a while I feel a pang of envy that matches the pangs I regularly feel in my metatarsals, heels and toes. Here is a picture that gave me such a jolt. The woman wearing these shoes was at least as old as I am. I noticed her across the Acropolis in Athens.

She turned her back to me the minute my camera came out--but I still snapped what I wanted to remember. HER SHOES! The Acropolis is difficult even in Nikes. I am in awe that anyone, let alone an old woman, could traipse around the slippery and uneven stones of antiquity in those shoes.

The top picture was taken on our ship during a lecture. My attention was lagging a bit, so I took a picture of feet. Now I'm struck by what a practical bunch we were.