Flakes

This afternoon on the bus I sat behind a scruffy old man. He had a page boy haircut, a cheap polyester shirt and bare feet. As the bus was pulling away, he crossed his legs to rest his foot on the top of the seat in front of him, and in so doing, he revealed the NASTIEST FEET IN THE UNIVERSE. Forget cloven hooves; Satan has feet like this. The toenails were yellow and twisted, and the skin was gnarled and flaking. And I mean flaking. As his foot brushed the backrest of the seat in front of him, it released a cascade, a veritable fountain of dead dry disgusting skin flakes. The bus was like the inside of a well-shaken snow globe.


Also he smelled bad. I knew it, and he knew it. He demonstrated this by enthusiastically huffing on his pits every so often. You could almost see him thinking, “Hey, something smells bad. Wait, is it me? (Hufffffffffffff) Yep, it is me. Thought so. All is right with the world.”


Now you might say, “Oh, very nice, mocking a poor old homeless man who doesn’t have the benefits of blah blah yadda yadda.” Well, perhaps, but he also had a late model, high-end Nokia camera phone, which he fiddled with between bouts of furious head scratching and dead skin avalanches. I say more professional podiatric care (and possibly the intervention of some sort of exorcist) and less superfluous gadgetry, old man!