Footloose

I have Podophobia. It's not the fear of a group of whales, or the fear of peas (though I don't like peas, but that's an entirely different blog post). It's a phobia of feet.

Not scared of, not a bit afraid of, not a dislike of. A full blown phobia - an irrational fear completely disproportionate to the Danger (yes, capital D, Danger). It even got on my 50 facts list.

To me, feet are dangerous, scary bastards that need to be kept in shoes at all times. If they can be funky shoes then even better (how do I love shoes and hate feet?).

I ♥ Shoooooooes

I will dry retch at the sight of a foot, even a picture of a foot. If a foot comes near me, I will panic, my heart will start racing and I will usually cry. I have even been known to request people only use the metric system around me, I will have none of this 6 foot tall business, you are 182.9cm thankyouverymuch. OK, maybe I made that last bit up.

Stoopid right? Yup. I can see you all nodding and making the international loony sign. It's OK, it's appropriate right now.

But (there is always a but), there is one set of feet that I love. Tricky's (like that wasn't predictable).

So baby soft with chubby little toes just perfect for playing 'This little piggie' on and making both of us giggle in delight.

I could nibble, kiss and breathe in his feet all day, luxuriating in their pristine, virgin state.

Well I could... until the bugger learned how to walk last month.

The silken skin is gone, replaced with tiny little toughened callouses on the edges of his toes from digging them in to the ground, willing himself to balance for just a few more steps. His heels roughened from the scraaaape of not quite picking his feet all the way up as he wobbles along.

They are now, to someone like me, completely off limits. No more touching, and definitely no more smooches. Ick. Yuck. Vomit.

My entire approach to him, well more specifically to his feet, has changed... and it's not good. In fact, Map Guy has pulled me up on it, told me I better figure out how to get over it before I end up giving Tricks a foot phobia too...

And he's right. Dammit.

I don't want Tricky to be afraid of his feet; to want to run away and cry at preschool when all the kids take their shoes off; to think that feet will somehow hurt him; to hyperventilate every time he tries on shoes because some other revolting foot just might have already touched it.

So every day now I try to touch his feet and not gag. It's working... I'm slowly getting there. There is still Buckley's chance I will be touching adult feet, but, you know, small steps. Pun most definitely intended.

Do you have a phobia? Do you worry about 'passing it on' to your kids?

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Glowless rocked the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors