BONUS POST!

I told you that I’m working on several projects at the same time. This is the opening chapter of reminiscence, a collection called “Don’t Look at the Big Purple Foot”. Enjoy.

Don’t Look at the Big Purple Foot

My childhood (and adulthood, for that matter) is filled with odd experiences that were strange then, and stranger now.  Looking back, perhaps they aren’t any stranger than anyone else’s, but family and friends have assured me that THEY never have had these things happen to THEM.

When I was a little kid, probably five or so, we went to visit a remote relative on my mother’s side.  I don’t know why.  We only went the one time, and there was never any explanation.  Anyway, just before we went into this old, tumbledown shack, mother grabbed my shoulder and said, “Make sure you don’t look at her big, purple foot.”

We must pause here, as I did then, to consider what the hell my mother was thinking of.  She was taking me to visit someone I didn’t know, in a shack, who apparently had a big, purple foot that I couldn’t look at.

We crossed the tumble-down porch of splintered wood, opened the screen door, and an old woman shouted out a greeting for us all.  Mother, Daddy, my sister, Susan, and I crowded into the tiny living room, and there was this old lady, in a chair, with her BIG, PURPLE FOOT propped up on a tiny footstool.

Well, what are you going to do if you are a little kid?  I took a good look.  It was big – about the size of half of a big watermelon, and it was deep purple.   The toes were purple, too, but about normal sized.  They looked like little ripe olives stuck on with toothpicks.

We were introduced, I suppose.  I know we were all dressed up in Sunday dresses and crinolines and hair bows.  Mother had her hand on my shoulder, gripping down, so I would smile.

We were later told that her foot got purple because it had been kicked by a rooster.  One would assume this might have caused an infection?  I don’t know.  With the advent of the Internet, I have searched for the cause of a big, purple foot, continue even now, and have never found it.

Like the search for the Northwest Passage, this is a personal quest.  This old lady is long dead, forgotten by most everyone, except that she had this big, purple foot.