The Watson Toe

I never thought of my feet as anything but my feet until I heard my nephew talking one day. He announced that one of his daughters has "the Watson toe."

Torn between rabid curiosity and half-afraid this was something bad, I leaned forward to ask more about it. My nephew claimed the Watson toe came to his kids by way of his mother, who is my sister, and we all started out with the maiden name of Watson, hence the Watson toe.

Instead of assuaging my curiosity, that bit of information fired up the dormant scientist in my brain. Were we talking genetics? Could I have it? I ripped off my shoes and studied my feet. Lo and behold, I had the Watson toe as well. (My foot is at 6 o'clock in the photo above.)

Now for those of you who are serious scientists, know that this is a localized term. There is no such scientific designation as the Watson toe, which is what we now call the second toe being longer than the first toe.

I found a study online in a scientific journal Ergonomics which measured toes in Caucasians, Koreans, and Asians. And if I understood what they said, Caucasians have a more rounded toe extension pattern than Koreans or Asians. Click over for yourself and have a gander at the phrasing: http://tinyurl.com/833myw5

Did you know there was such a thing as toe cleavage? That's the gap of toes that shows above the covered toe of a shoe, like a pump. I don't often let my toe cleavage show - do you?

Getting back to toe length - is your big toe or your second toe longer? Is that really determined by genetics?

Here's a point of view which says maybe. http://tinyurl.com/7sgej8e The upshot of this more readable article: genetics may play a role, but more than one gene is likely involved. Thank you, John MacDonald from the University of Delaware for thinking about this in such detail!

So much for toes.

I've had two smashing guest appearances elsewhere for my recent releases. If you haven't stopped in at Pat Stoltey's place to see my interview and my gardening hat, check it out at this permalink: http://bit.ly/GEXpRf . Also, Jane Richardson kindly hosted me for a One-Link Lowdown at her place and there's lots of great intel and dirt there. Here's that permalink: http://tinyurl.com/6mntyz7 This coming Friday, I'll be hanging out with Caroline Clemmons at her place(http://carolineclemmons.blogspot.com/)

Always a pleasure to see you at Mudpies. Y'all come back now, ya hear?

Maggie Toussaint
www.maggietoussaint.com