Morton's Toe

Alex plays the Romanian version of ‘This Little Piggy’ with Naya. She grabs our daughter’s toes and says, “Degetul cel mare, pleaca la plimbare, Mijlociul duce pardesiul…”

This translates as ‘The big toe leaves for a walk, the middle toe wears a coat…”

I interrupt. “Alex, that’s not the middle toe. The middle toe is the third toe.”

She looks at me strangely, the weight of this logic forcing out some other logic she’s apparently had jammed into her head for too many years.

“But eet seems like meedle toe.”

I look at my own feet. The second toe is the longest, longer than even the big toe. “Yeah, you know, it does seem like the second toe is the middle toe. You know, like the equivalent of the middle finger.”

I walk through the analogies in my head. Clearly, the big toe is the equivalent of the thumb. And obviously, the pinkie is the equivalent of the little toe. And the ring finger is certainly the equivalent of the fourth toe.

So the middle finger should be the equivalent of the third toe. But it’s just not. It doesn’t seem like the middle toe.

“You’re right. The second toe is the middle finger.”

So then what the hell is the third toe? Well, it’s definitely not the index finger, cause I can’t point with it. In fact, even though I’m staring at it and concentrating as much as my third glass of Riunite will allow, I can’t quite make it do much of anything. It’s even more useless than my ring finger. I don’t know what the hell it is.

But even more distressing is that MY FOOT HAS NO INDEX FINGER. What if my hands were tied by home invaders, and I had to somehow use my foot to dial the cell phone? What would I use?

Well, I guess I would use my big toe. So is the big toe the index finger? Well, it kind of feels like the index finger. It’s fat like the thumb, but capable like the index finger. In terms of toes, it’s like the best of both fingers.

Curious, I lift my legs over my desk to grasp my cell phone with my feet to test out this newfound logic, but knock over my glass of wine in the process.

“Vut zee hell are you doing, monkee boy?”

“Well, if you must know, I’m practicing what I would do if we were kidnapped by bandits!”

“You vould entertain zem?”