The Smell of Desperation

We knew this day would come. We just thought it would be in another five or six years at least.

Our home has an odor problem.

At first we were perplexed by the faint smell of funk wafting from random rooms of the house. One day the problem would be in the bathroom, the next in the kitchen. We took out the garbage and checked under the couch for chocolate milk cups gone awry (not that that could happen in our house), but we found nothing.

One time, after a rainstorm, I smelled the smell in my car. I thought perhaps my carpets had gotten wet and would need to be cleaned, but the next day the smell was gone. It became one of life's great mysteries.

And then we found it.

The nasty, funky, nauseating smell is coming from Keaton's feet.

I cannot express to you how bad his shoes/socks/feet smell. At the end of the day, it rapidly permeates the air in every room Keaton enters. This problem doesn't just occur when he takes his shoes off like a normal person. No, you can smell his feet through his shoes. It's quite magnificent when you think about it.

When we realized the smell was feet, my first thoughts centered around my poor smelly kid at school. Is my kid the smelly kid?  Have people noticed that the disgusting smell only shows up when Keaton's around? Does the teacher think we don't bathe him? Do kids refuse to sit by him because of the rank nastiness of his feet?  Is my child's life ruined?  What have I done?

I started looking for solutions.  Immediately we began making him take his shoes straight to the garage to keep the smell out of the house, but then there are his socks. We can not put these deadly toxic items in the laundry hamper because of the pollution. We're still working on a plan for that.

Upon Uncle Mike's suggestion, I bought baby powder and began filling his shoes with it every night. He really likes this idea as after the powder application he takes a big whiff of the shoes and says "They smell so fresh!"  It makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

Another friend suggested that perhaps the shoes got wet and have mildewed under the padding, causing the smell. I thought (and I guess I still think) this is possible, but tonight I found evidence that the day-to-day sweat is the major root cause.

I took off his nasty shoes and socks and told him to get in the bath. As he walked away, I discovered that his feet looked like white, wrinkly prunes. Yes, friends, his feet sweat so much that at the end of the day he's pruny.  I was shocked! Surely this must be a serious medical condition.

So...moms, dads, aunts, uncles, random people with feet - help us! Should we seek medical advice? What kind of shoes can we buy this child?  He has wide feet (sort of like flippers), so shoes are already hard to find. Are there potions or ointments or something that can cure the sweat and the subsequent smell?  I don't think we can live this way until college, and it's probably going to get worse.

Desperation has set in, and it smells like feet.