There's a man in our neighborhood who likes to run
barefoot around the campus and the edge of the stadium,
in rain as well as on hot days. People who do this swear
you can really feel the earth, and improve both foot strength
and stability. After all, our prehistoric ancestors did exactly
this, running away from woolly mammoths or from their head-
hunting enemies with not a rubber or leather sole
on their feet. It's so sweet to see children kick off
their sandals and twirl on soft grass, or track little footprints
on the shore like plump sandpipers. But when I was a child,
I was never allowed to play barefoot in the garden; my mother
was afraid that tapeworms could break through my skin
and travel up my intestines, where they'd lay their eggs
and start a colony. It wasn't until I was older that I learned
not all nematodes are parasites of human hosts.
But recently I saw a magnified image of a tiny nematode
which scientists had fed with fungi. Its mouth doubled
fearfully in size, and looked like the fanged porthole
of a front-loading washing machine, or a giant blue hole.
Clearly a maw, an eager jaw, ready to spring into action.
In Sarawak I never went barefoot for fear of hookworms, a variiety of roundworm whose larvae enter our bodies through the skin. Seen under a microscope they are indeed terrifying, as in your graphic “fanged porthole” image. But, like us, they are creatures trying to survive in the only way they know.
Isn’t it something to consider how and when we learned the fears we have?
It is, but this does not lessen the fear. It lives so deep in the roots of us. Like a mind-parasite!
I love the ergonomics of barefoot-style shoes, whose boosters do seem to be right about most of the health benefits. But walking or running barefoot doesn’t make sense even where there are no terrifying parasites such as you’ns are describing, for so many reasons: chiggers, ticks, rusty nails, broken glass, thorns, venemous snakes, etc. etc. That said, I can’t help but be enormously impressed by the local Amish women who stride confidently across gravel in their bare feet. Even when I was a kid, my feet weren’t that tough!