it occurs to me that i've always loved shoes. i am fairly matter-of-fact when it comes to my clothing - but
shoes? i can practically wax poetic when i find a pair i like. which is interesting. because i have a foot issue. or, rather, i have a slime issue. i cannot
stand to encounter surprising, slimy, or wiggly
anything with wet bare feet. it sends me over the edge of rational thought. i like to believe i have matured out of this - but i think, more likely, i just know now how to avoid putting my feet in these vulnerable situations.
i was born with pigeon toes. true. technically (and according to my mother), i had
tibial torsion. my physical therapist friends probably call it
in-toeing. in any case, from a very early point (pre-walking, for sure), i wore special shoes with a metal bar between them every night, holding my tibias (as it were) in a preferred, more neutral position. my mother attributes this nightly hefting of a metal bar to my early walking (at ten months), with the added encouragement of being put in pretty dresses which caused me to
bear crawl to avoid stepping on the hems. who wouldn't want to move on quickly to walking upright?
as a ten-year old i was so determined (read: desperate) to possess high-heeled shoes that i made myself a pair out of corrugated cardboard. my recollection is that they held up well as long as i, essentially, walked on my toes. in seventh-grade, wooden Swedish clogs were the must-have foot apparel. if you've ever tried to walk in these, you will wonder how we all endured them for two years of middle school. and what a racket in the halls! i recall embracing quiet, little black Chinese slippers late in high school. and, then, there were my purple Birkenstock sandals and gray Birkenstock felt clogs from my college days.
i have three stories about my feet's encounters with wet, slimy things. when i was about nine, we visited my maternal grandmother on Long Island, and my mother, brother, and i thought a quick swim in the sound at the edge of her property might be just the thing on a hot summer day.
slime! algae! sludge! i was beside myself in a panic to get out of that water as quickly as possible. the neighbor's golden retriever, sensing my incredible state of agitation, even hurled himself at me in a valiant rescue attempt. one way or another, i exited the water. likely my mother played a much larger role than the dog in making this happen.
when i was in my early teenage years, we were often at the beach. i recall one time my parents thought it would be interesting to explore the banks of the sound where others frequently looked for clams. i'm sure they had no idea we would be sinking up to our knees in
thick, slimy mud. encountering little creatures with each muddy, slimy descent of our feet. i have rarely concentrated so hard in my life. because there's no way out other than to
get through the mud. i invoked any incantation i could that would keep me moving relentlessly forward without losing my mind.
the last surprising encounter my feet had with slime was towards the end of high school, on another beach adventure with my family. we thought to cross a very low tidal area, which seemed safe enough what with all the very visible sand, shells, etc. there were those nice sandy ridges made by the tide, clearly visible through the shallow water and clearly felt by my feet. until one of them moved - something (a flounder?) slipping quickly out from under my foot - leading me to, basically, squeal my way across the rest of the tidal pool. because, just like the mud, that was the only way out.
so, maybe, that's why i like shoes. they are my saviors. my protectors.
my slime repellers.
here are some of my favorites right now.
i've had these blue shoes for at least ten years. i even had them re-soled recently. when i saw them, in the back room of
The Shoe Market, i just couldn't rationalize buying them. i mean, when was i going to wear
blue shoes? but i couldn't stop thinking about them, so i went back and bought them a few days later. they are, i believe, my favorite pair of shoes.
these are completely impractical shoes. and i am not used to being tall, so wearing them is a bit surreal. i bought them partly because of the speckled wood at the front toe, partly because of the orange starburst near the buckle, and mainly because they are green.
these are great shoes, but i get a blister on each of my little toes if i walk too far in them. i found that out when i wore them to an interview at UNC (for a post-graduate grant, which i ended up securing). i parked (of course) some distance from the interview location and ended up having to take off the shoes and walk barefoot most of the way (see, i don't have a problem with bare feet - as long as they are not in water).
the only reason i own these shoes is because of Halloween. how women walk on their toes all day, i cannot fathom. if only i had a video to show me learning how to walk in high heels, all dressed up as a weather girl for our school's fall festival. everyone at work found it quite hilarious. i got the hang of it after about an hour - and have never been so glad to remove shoes in my life!
likely the reason my coworkers were so amused by my high-heeled antics is that
this is the kind of shoe i typically wear to work. well, these particular shoes are pretty much retired from making public appearances, but you get the idea. these are not the oldest shoes in my closet, but they are certainly the most broken-in. they are what i wear if i know it's going to be a really rainy day & i'm going to be getting in and out of my car frequently. poor, beaten-up, soggy leather shoes.
much belatedly, i own a pair of Doc Martens. they were quite the thing when i was in college, but i finally found a pair of my own about ten years ago. i was, actually, looking for a used pair of dress shoes for one of the boys (not part of their usual wardrobe but needed for some now-forgotten special event) and, there on the rack of the goodwill store, sat this unassuming pair of boots. the big gash on the toe of the right boot is very recent, taking the brunt of an opening wheelchair lift when i was helping unload buses at my school one morning. i was sad it took a chunk out of my shoe but very okay that it was the shoe and not my toes.
likely the oldest pair of shoes in my closet. they are sandals sent to me from Ghana. when i was in high school, i had two penpals, garnered from the back of an international magazine of some sort where penpals could advertise their desire to correspond with you. out of all the ones i wrote to, two wrote back - a young man in Ghana and a young man in Syria. fairly quickly, the one from Ghana sent me these leather sandals and a little leather purse. then asked if i could help secure him a green card. i demurred, and he hit the road for Libya, never to be heard from again. i corresponded with the young man in Syria for at least seven years. he lived in Damascus, and i have recently been thinking of him often. wondering what his fate was in his country.
i got these sandals re-soled recently, too.
