Step No. 10 - Play touch football barefoot in an urban park...

... without fear of shredding your foot on spent hyperdermic needles, broken bottles, or rusty nails.

Rusty nails: The urban park's most trusted accessory.
Giving kids tetanus since 1894. 

It was a long time ago that I was able to play any outdoor sports in my bare feet. It usually involved soccer baseball or touch football in the high grass of my parents' backyard or in a friend's front yard. Of course, I knew that the expanse of grass in my immediate purview was not the playground of society's seedy underbelly. Neither I nor my friends worried for our tootsies' safety.

In the intervening years, literally hundreds of horror stories in the news combined with personal experiences of seeing spent needles in playgrounds has engendered a fear of even sitting on the grass in urban parks. I say it's time to cast off the shackles of fear and take a risk. Let's go down to the park, peel off our sneakers and smelly sweaty socks and run around with a football. We'll feel the cool grass caress and tickle the soft underside of our feet. One must exercise caution in the post football reverie that the flood of endorphins is only temporary and should not encourage spontaneous games of barefoot touch football on asphalt.