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Mar. 30th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
Teffie says I have a worse shoe fetish than the one women are supposed to have, stereotypically. Maybe so. Thirteen pairs of shoes does seem a bit excessive.
That amounts to four pairs of boots: Insulated winter half-rubber boots, insulated hunting boots, cowboy boots, and safety-toed Wellingtons ideal for the motorcycle. One pair safety-toed athletic or "light hiker" style half-boots. One pair plain safety-toed oxfords. Non-safety-toed light hikers, leather "rugged casuals," plain black service oxfords, brown dress oxfords, black lightweight athletic shoes, "rugged" sandals, and a pair of Viet Cong sneakers; black canvas with rubber soles, slipper-like. Thirteen pairs of shoes.
The safety-toed shoes aren't my fault. Work requires me to have them, and they get me another pair every two years. I'm supposed to throw the old ones away because leather absorbs contaminants; a set of leather shoes becomes pretty toxic after a few years of wandering through chemical plants and the like. But I don't do chemical plants any more, so I don't throw 'em out, I keep 'em.
I got the oxfords, brown and black, for job interviews. Until recently I had two pairs of wingtips too, dating back to high school, so old I probably wore them to church at some time. But years of comfortable shoes have allowed my feet to spread to the point that I couldn't get into those any more, so I pitched them.
Besides, hard leather shoes suck. Life is too short for shoes that pinch.
The light hikers would be all the athletic shoes I need. I don't play sports, although I do walk quite a bit. But I bought a pair of the lightest plain black athletic shoes I could find before my last trip to San Jose'. This was with malice aforethought to get through the security lanes without setting anything off; especially humiliating to me because I have metal in me in a couple of interesting places, and there's nothing quite like having the polite Indian gentleman (in a turban) set off a visible and audible alarm with his hand scanner as he passes across each and every one of them. Well, it worked. So those are my airline shoes.
As for the rest.. "it seemed like a good idea at the time," I guess. The cowboy boots are a fine example of that. They're comfortable as anything, but a high-heeled, leather-soled boot is not to be worn here when there's ice on the sidewalks, which is about 11.5 months of the year. The remaining half month it's too hot for boots. Well, they're pretty, I can look at them now and again.
I suppose my delight in shoes comes from my youth, when shopping in the small town stores in the "good old days" before Wal-Mart meant finding even one pair of shoes that fit was an event worth celebrating. Then I had two pairs a year, hard leather shoes in the fall and sneakers in the spring. I was even more delighted when I got AWAY from those good old small town stores and discovered they made shoes in WIDE and that shoes are NOT supposed to hurt.
Perhaps shoes that don't hurt are a sign of the decline of American civilization. The same lack of self-sacrifice and patience that gave us those other marks of our downfall, instant iced tea and squeeze catsup bottles-- not only squeeze, but squeeze bottles where the catsup comes out the BOTTOM. But if so, I don't care. My feet don't hurt and I feel fine.
That amounts to four pairs of boots: Insulated winter half-rubber boots, insulated hunting boots, cowboy boots, and safety-toed Wellingtons ideal for the motorcycle. One pair safety-toed athletic or "light hiker" style half-boots. One pair plain safety-toed oxfords. Non-safety-toed light hikers, leather "rugged casuals," plain black service oxfords, brown dress oxfords, black lightweight athletic shoes, "rugged" sandals, and a pair of Viet Cong sneakers; black canvas with rubber soles, slipper-like. Thirteen pairs of shoes.
The safety-toed shoes aren't my fault. Work requires me to have them, and they get me another pair every two years. I'm supposed to throw the old ones away because leather absorbs contaminants; a set of leather shoes becomes pretty toxic after a few years of wandering through chemical plants and the like. But I don't do chemical plants any more, so I don't throw 'em out, I keep 'em.
I got the oxfords, brown and black, for job interviews. Until recently I had two pairs of wingtips too, dating back to high school, so old I probably wore them to church at some time. But years of comfortable shoes have allowed my feet to spread to the point that I couldn't get into those any more, so I pitched them.
Besides, hard leather shoes suck. Life is too short for shoes that pinch.
The light hikers would be all the athletic shoes I need. I don't play sports, although I do walk quite a bit. But I bought a pair of the lightest plain black athletic shoes I could find before my last trip to San Jose'. This was with malice aforethought to get through the security lanes without setting anything off; especially humiliating to me because I have metal in me in a couple of interesting places, and there's nothing quite like having the polite Indian gentleman (in a turban) set off a visible and audible alarm with his hand scanner as he passes across each and every one of them. Well, it worked. So those are my airline shoes.
As for the rest.. "it seemed like a good idea at the time," I guess. The cowboy boots are a fine example of that. They're comfortable as anything, but a high-heeled, leather-soled boot is not to be worn here when there's ice on the sidewalks, which is about 11.5 months of the year. The remaining half month it's too hot for boots. Well, they're pretty, I can look at them now and again.
I suppose my delight in shoes comes from my youth, when shopping in the small town stores in the "good old days" before Wal-Mart meant finding even one pair of shoes that fit was an event worth celebrating. Then I had two pairs a year, hard leather shoes in the fall and sneakers in the spring. I was even more delighted when I got AWAY from those good old small town stores and discovered they made shoes in WIDE and that shoes are NOT supposed to hurt.
Perhaps shoes that don't hurt are a sign of the decline of American civilization. The same lack of self-sacrifice and patience that gave us those other marks of our downfall, instant iced tea and squeeze catsup bottles-- not only squeeze, but squeeze bottles where the catsup comes out the BOTTOM. But if so, I don't care. My feet don't hurt and I feel fine.
