Evolution Has a Ways to Go

Prentice N. Largefonte hit 80 last year and we spent several evenings on the river together. He can still out-wade, out-cast, and out-fish me when he's in the mood, but last year was the first time he asked me to tie a fly onto his tippet for him. The light was failing, and his hands were just unsteady enough that his fishing would have been done for the day, had I not been there to help. On another of our evening forays, he commented to me that it is getting difficult for him to cut his toenails. He said "it hurts'. I managed to dodge the topic by mentioning that my hearing was getting worse and worse.

Nature exacts certain tolls for allowing us to age. Things like hair, hearing, flexibility, and sexual prowess diminish and are replaced with bladders and bowels that are more active. We also gain greater awareness of muscle groups that can ache. The other day, as I was getting ready to dress, I realized that I too found the task of trimming toenails more arduous than before. It may have been due to some new muscle group that was announcing its presence or some other muscle group that refused to stretch to accommodate my task.

Nevertheless, I resorted to sitting on the edge of my bed and crossing my leg so that one foot rested on the other knee, in the normal fashion that men sit.
It was then that I noticed a flaw in human evolution. The sole of my foot was facing me and the toenails all faced away from me. In order to trim my nails, I had to twist my foot to an angle I could reach with the clippers. It hurt! It occurred to me that evolution would better serve us if toenails were eliminated from our feet, since we no longer need them as claws. Our species lost that need several millennia ago, so what's the deal? We lost our tails, why not toenails? I suppose its another toll exacted by Nature, just so we remember who's in charge.

Now I'm thinking about camping and fishing with Prentice next summer and I'm wondering what incapacities he will share with me. I'm prepared to tie some more flies on for him but if we're sitting by the campfire and he hauls out a set of nail clippers, my hearing will suffer even more degradation.

Royal Dun