QOD: Which is your best foot?

Born to a left-footed dad and a right-footed mom, I began life on a stable footing. My earliest years, therefore, with dad footing the bills, were footloose and fancy free, with an occasional need to foot it to the store for mom. Admittedly, I often relied upon a footstool, but knew it was a temporary maneuver, what with the pater being a six-footer. DNA gives certain assurances.

On the other hand, DNA can give you pause: my sister is web-footed. This was hidden from me for a number of years, due to her expeditious use of proper footwear. Thankfully, my worry about developing the need to spend 24 hours a day in camouflaging footgear was soon put to rest (sort of a foot-rest, if you will) by discovering the trait expressed pre-birth. Talk about starting out on the wrong foot.

I lettered in football in high school, although faulty footwork banned me from boxing, and my numerous footfaults kept me off the tennis courts. Scholastically? I didn’t know a footmark from a footnote, and if a teacher asked me to read from the foot of the page, I was looking for an outline of a footprint. Tried to fake it, but always got my foot in my mouth. Oddly enough, I was terrific with a sewing machine—nobody knew how to handle a presser foot better.

Concerned about my future prospects, my dad sent me off to help my uncle during the summer. At first, a ranch seemed like a great idea, but after a month of dealing with foot rot and foot-and-mouth disease, I thumbed a ride home. Only place I want to see a cow is on my plate, medium-rare.

When the day came that I had to stand on my own feet, I was spooked enough to join the infantry. A foot soldier’s life is not all it’s cracked up to be. No problem keeping my footlocker in order, and I could beat any of my buddies in a footrace, but mortar fire in the foothills was a definite bummer. No sense putting one foot in the grave at my tender age.

After my psychiatric discharge, I tried selling vacuum cleaners. Yes, yes—you hear it coming: couldn’t get my foot in the door. The stress brought out my lead foot, which garnered several speeding tickets and one (small) clip of news footage. My dad said he would have stopped making payments on my car if he hadn’t been so worried I’d become a footpad and hit jail before I was twenty.

At my third—or was it fourth?—job, I was extolling the virtues of a footbrake on a mountain bike when the customer asked me if I’d ever done community theater. After some footdragging, I showed up for tryouts. Got the part of a footman, who, on his half-day off, meets some lovely on a footbridge. Usual ending. Of the play, that is. An agent saw me and has since managed to get me a foothold in Hollywood. Turns out I don’t have feet of clay under the footlights. Proud mom and pop, and with a little luck, the starlet I’m playing footsie with has some kind of webfoot-discouraging kind of DNA.

How do you like that footle?