I scuffed the top of my left big toe yesterday. I abraded the patch of skin just beyond the toenail booting the kick pad at jujutsu. Since I had just clipped my toenails, that area was a bit more exposed and tender than usual. This is by no means a life-threatening injury, or even really an injury at all, but I did have to apply a Band-Aid to keep my sock off the scraped spot.
This reminds me of when I was a young’un and used to scrape my toes all the time. I did it in the summer, either when I was barefoot or when I’d just gotten new sandals. I would trip or get lazy or hit a high stretch of sidewalk and drag the end of a naked toe or toes along the rough pavement. It’s a terrible thing to scrape a toe, because (A) it hurts and (B) it affects the way you walk for the next several days and (C) toe Band-Aids scoop up huge amounts of sand. I would inevitably do my toe scuffing on a Saturday, just in time to have to cram the sore, bandaged little piggy into dress shoes for church on Sunday.
Now I’m a grown-up, and here I’ve gone and done the same thing again. Yesterday, during kicking practice, I should have curled my toes back and struck the target with the bottom of my foot. But I was unpracticed and perhaps a bit lazy and did not curl them back enough. And here I am, probably 25 years past the last time I did this, again wearing nice shoes the day afterward and regretting my clumsiness. What’s that old saw about those who don’t remember history being doomed to repeat it?
Well, I remember getting scratched by a monkey at a petting zoo just fine, so let’s hope I don’t have to repeat that experience any time soon.