Summer Feet

As a kid I always used to pride myself in having the toughest callouses on my feet. I would brag to kids in my neighborhood. 'I can walk on ANYTHING.' My brother and I used to challenge one another to walk up and down my next door neighbors drive way. This driveway wasn't like everyone elses... It was all sharp white rock with jagged pointy edges everywhere. And I was the effing master. I used a mix between conscious light stepping and my suburbly weathered feet to walk up and down the drive every day of summer. I would walk to and from the park barefoot, to and from the center, anything and everything to prepare myself for the barefoot challenges of summer. I would be proud of my hard blackened feet after a day of running around on black concrete and dirt in the park.
One summer I was determined to get my summer feet early so that I could challenge my brother and neighbor to a contest early and win handily.  I remember setting off on my journey on a weekend before school had officially ended and told myself... you will walk on this pavement all the way to Braeburn and back and no matter how hot it is or how much your feet hurt... you will not stop. Braeburn was my elementary school and was a little less than a mile away. After I was about 1/2 way there I realized the sun was really heating up the black pavement. Like... it felt like I was walking on hot coals.
I jumped up on the curb which was some kind of white rock. (We won't take the time to go into why the curbs in my hometown were made of some kind of expensive white granite-like rock, but I will segment off for a moment and mention I hit those curbs 3 times while driving and all 3 times within 5 seconds my tire was completely flat...
You may be thinking, wow this girl can't drive.. well that's just being judgmental...I may be a little bit spacey but was it my fault for hitting the curb? No. It was my cities fault for spending money on rich curbs that I can't bump up against innocently like EVERY OTHER PLACE in the the world... Assholes.)
Anyways I told myself I could take a 10 second break ONLY if I balanced on the white curbs (which were also hot but not quite as scalding in temperature as the road.) After making my way to Braeburn I stood in the creek convincing myself that I was walking on the pebbles for further strengthening... NOT because my feet were on fire. 
The walk back was a battle with myself, but I won, kinda. I made it the whole way home with minimal balancing on curbs and mostly walking on the road.
I decided to end the walk to my house by taking on the rock driveway to see my progression.
It was painful
It was beyond painful.
I had never felt pain like this, not even in the very beginnings of spring when my pads had months of winter to become soft and sensitive.
I decided I would come back tomorrow and try it out again but I woke up in pain.
Because of my undying dedication to summer feet I had given myself second degree burns on the bottoms of my feet. I spent the next few weeks regressing as my feet shed layers and I lost my claim on toughest feet in the neighborhood.
It was a rough summer and I had to find other things to be the best at... racing car-ish things that I made out of a super sized erector set..

Getting the highest double bounce from the sprinkler under the trampoline...

Making extensive tree forts that I would try to sleep in overnight...

(fine... a tree fort was just some blankets tied around a tree branch)

  All of these things were equally rewarding and made me feel like a productive child all summer long, but none were quite as fulfilling as winning the challenge for the toughest summer feet.