Worst Things to Step On Barefoot

Ranked by how loudly the person who found it said so.

Entries
10
Category
Stuff
Updated
  1. A rubber squeaky toy shaped like a bone on a dark hallway rug, a dog bed nearby.

    10. A Squeaky Dog Toy

    A rubber toy left in the dark hallway at 3 a.m. It hurts a bit and then squeaks loudly, waking the dog, who now wants to play. The injury is minor. The night is over.

  2. A kitchen floor at night with a single crumb lit by the open refrigerator.

    09. A Crumb You Can't Find

    Something small and hard on the kitchen floor: a grain of rice, a crumb, a sliver of dog biscuit. It hurts out of proportion to its size, and when you look down it is gone, because it is now stuck to your heel.

  3. A hairbrush lying bristles up on a tiled bathroom floor.

    08. A Hairbrush, Face Up

    Dropped bristles up on the bathroom floor, it is a hundred small spikes. Each is blunt alone and awful together. It is a bed of nails for someone who never trained for it.

  4. An old curled aluminum pull tab half buried in beach sand.

    07. A Pull Tab

    Detachable soda can tabs littered beaches for years and cut plenty of feet, one reason Reynolds engineer Daniel Cudzik's stay-on tab took over after 1975. Old ones still surface in sand. Like finding a coin, but it bites.

  5. A shimmering blacktop parking lot under a hard summer sun, a pair of flip-flops left beside a car.

    06. Hot Asphalt

    A parking lot in July, crossed barefoot between the car and the pool. The blacktop runs far hotter than the air. The walk turns into a high-stepping sprint that nobody in the lot can respect.

  6. A slug on a damp patio stone at night beside a back door.

    05. A Slug

    Met at night on the patio or the bathroom floor of an old house. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't need to. You will feel it for the rest of your life, and the slug, flattened and unbothered, is probably fine.

  7. Metal jacks and a small rubber ball scattered on a wooden floor.

    04. Jacks

    Six-pointed metal pieces from the children's game, scattered across a floor. However they land, a point faces up, the same idea as the caltrop, which armies scattered to stop horses. It still works on people in pajamas.

  8. A brass thumbtack point up on beige carpet below a corkboard.

    03. A Thumbtack

    A flat-headed tack that has fallen from a bulletin board and landed point up, as designed. It is invisible on carpet and finds you anyway. The bulletin board has lost one flyer. You have lost something too.

  9. A three-pin electrical plug lying on carpet with its pins pointing up, cord trailing off.

    02. A British Plug

    BS 1363 · 1947

    Britain's three-pin plug, standardized in 1947, has a heavy fused body and thick rectangular pins. Dropped on the floor, it tends to land pins up, a fact every person raised in the UK learns at night. A national hazard, with a fuse in it for safety.

  10. A single plastic toy brick on a hardwood floor, studs up, in a dark hallway.

    01. A Lego Brick

    Lego · 1958

    The modern brick was patented in Denmark in 1958 and has been made of ABS since 1963. A 2x2 can take about 4,240 newtons before failing, so your foot gives first. By 2015 there were about 62 Lego parts for every person on Earth. Several are in your hallway.

Honorable mentions

  • A lawn sparkling with morning dew, a pair of shoes left on the back step.

    Dewy Grass

    A lawn still wet with dew before the sun gets to it. Every step is cold and soft and slightly alive. It is the reason people take their shoes off in the first place.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A dark carpeted hallway at night with a faint wet patch shining in a strip of light.

    Something Wet in the Dark

    A cool, damp spot on the carpet, found in a single step at night. There are only a few possibilities and none are good. You will not turn on the light. You will regret not turning on the light.

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