The INVISIBLE KILLER

OK, well, it's not strictly invisible, but it's *practically* invisible against the right background.

And it's not a *killer*. But it did hurt my foot. Not in the same way that the toilet tank lid did last week when IT fell on my foot, though. That was quick and painful. This was slow and insidious.

So. Where were we?

Yes. My foot.

So I'm sitting at work this afternoon, at my desk, and I realize that my foot hurts. And that it's been hurting pretty much all day, just slightly below my level of awareness.

The strange thing is WHERE it hurts. It hurts between my big toe and my second toe. Kind of like there's a cut there. But there isn't. I *know* I hadn't cut or scratched between my toes.

So, once it starts bothering me *within* my level of consciousness, I do what anyone would do. I take off my sneaker and my sock right there at my desk, and check out the old foot. My cow orkers really enjoyed that.

What I found, though, was a little unusual.

It wasn't a scratch or cut. It was a ... crease mark? You know, like if something sharp was pressing against your skin for a long time, it would leave a crease mark. Weird.

And this mark was running along the top of my foot and through the two toes. How the heck could that happen? I had my sneakers on all day!

Then a possibility occurs to me.

I reach into my sock.

And I pull out...

A nearly invisible...

very long and fine...

blonde hair.

My own genetic material, one generation removed. My 9-year-old daughter's hair.

The invisible killer. Well, *practically*, at least. You know, if I kept my shoe on for a few weeks, and the crease mark became a sore, and then got infected, and then the infection spread to the surrounding tissues... who knows WHAT could have happened!!!



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Please note: Anyone with any concerns over me wasting bandwidth on such a trivial matter should refer to the title of this blog. They can't all be "War and Peace", you know!