FEET

I have written about my damn feet before. I have had problems with my feet nearly all of my life. I can still remember going to a shoe store at the mall (remember malls?) where we always went to shop for school clothes. There was an actual shoe salesperson and he measured my feet and brought back the shoes I chose. None of them fit. My mother, I think, was blaming the clerk for getting my size wrong, but then the clerk, obviously somewhat exasperated, said, “Well, she does have fat feet.” I thought it was hilarious. On the way out my Mom whispered to me “what I should have said (to the clerk) was “you have a fat head.”” This I found even more hilarious – she really was indignant! I thought yeah, he didn’t say I had a fat head, he didn’t say I was fat, he didn’t say I was ugly. He had merely stated a fact (not that having a fat head, being fat, or ugly might still be a fact, but he never said any of those things). But, I walked out without any shoes.

So these feet have been with me throughout my life. I don’t think I always treated them the best. My favorite shoes in highschool for a while-rain, sleet or snow-were these cloth things called china doll slippers. Nothing but a bit of canvas and socks between me and the snow and rain. I did get past wearing those after I couldn’t find them anymore. There had probably been a civil liability suit brought against the people who sold them in cold climes to dumbass teenagers like me.

The next wrong thing was Reeboks. I loved my Reebok hightops and I wore pair after pair for years in a row. I did aerobics in them and that was fine. Then, I took up running in them. That wasn’t so fine because then came the Morton’s neuroma. At times I could barely walk because it hurt so much. Eventually, I ended up at the school podiatrist who explained the importance of shoes as if it were the Ten Commandments. So, I ended up with orthotics and learning to find the far more expensive, heavy-duty support running shoes. Always in extra-wide, I might add.

Everything was going along okay and then it wasn’t. The Morton’s neuroma flared up so much and so bad that I finally did have it surgically removed. What fun that was. (Remember this?)

After a lot of pain and rehabilitation, I was finally back up and running again after that. But finally, after years, I have had to give up running. I ended up with having something called “Runner’s Knee”. Just what I need to tell my mother to justify her telling me that I shouldn’t run all those years. Yes, mother, you were probably right.

Anyway, recently, I was looking for a new pair of walking boots and there was NOTHING. Anywhere. I assume it’s all part of the “Covid-19” shipping problems, but I was getting really fed up with the support wearing out on my shoes. I had been wondering for quite a while if I could find men’s shoes that would fit. It’s not like I was looking for stilettos, afterall (though I do understand that those can be found in men’s sizes, too). Anyway, I found out that an extra wide in women’s is a regular wide in men!! Such a small thing, but I never knew it and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I looked for the shoes I had been looking for in women’s sizes except in men’s sizes and -Voila. There they were and, not only did they have the shoes I wanted in my size, they had them for much cheaper than they would have been in a woman’s size shoe. Partly because size 7 men’s is pretty small so there aren’t as many guys that wear that size and, therefore, more on the sale rack!

But it also got me thinking. If my feet are really a man’s feet, then somewhere there must be a man with MY size 7 feet. He has been taunted for his pretty feet his entire life. So, whoever you are, wherever you are. Can I please have those feet back?