I have never been so proud of my son as I was the day when he came running towards me crying because there was marker on his feet. While washing off his flippers, I asked him why he had colored on his toes. He looked at me and said, “I was trying to be like you!” Although I was flattered, I still couldn’t understand what he was getting at. Finally, he stopped his sniffling and said, “I just wanted to pick up the marker like you do.” And then as he demonstrated with a pen, the planets fell into alignment, and it all made sense.
Think of all the fun my son and I will have together with our prehensile toes–picking up legos, sorting laundry, drawing pictures with chalk on the back deck. The sky is really the limit.
One thing that we might have trouble with is long distance, barefoot running. According to the article “These Toes Were Made for Running,” stubby toes are an advantage for running though largely of a type that humans don’t do anymore. I do love the cautionary last line of this story though: “There’s talk about whether the pinkie toe is eventually going to disappear.” Frances, who was once an 80 year old neighbor of ours, would just shake her head at this speculation, kick off her pink slipper, and proudly display her four-toed foot. Hopefully you wouldn’t allow your eyes to bulge out like we did when she did that to us in her living room over banana cream pie. Suddenly a little prehensile toe action is looking pretty good.
the vigorous suck 
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