kethrai's Diaryland Diary

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Soft Shoe Shuffle...

One of the small signals that lets me know I’m not a kid anymore is the advent of sensible shoes.


I hate shoes and I love them. I have really large feet, and I always lusted after the cute, dainty shoes that they never seem to make for women my size. You know the ones—dainty, strappy, spikey, glittery, sexy shoes. The ones that scream “Feminine! Flirty! Cute!”


By the time I was 12, I was wearing a women’s size 9 shoe. Try and find appropriate kid shoes in that size. I dare you. By the time I was out of high school, I was working on 10.5’s. I seem to have settled, finally, into an 11—and am praying to avoid the curse that my mother bears, a 12N shoe. I can, at least, still shop in the Walmarts and Targets of the world and find at least A pair of shoes to fit me, if not THE pair. The flirty, feminine, cute pair.


In fact, I sometimes blame the lack of appropriate shoes on my complete inability to manifest any of those particular qualities—i.e., flirty, feminine, or cute. Handicapped by my outsized feet and my staid New Englander outlook, I tend to shop for the shoe that will get the job done.


In my early 20’s, the shoe that got the job done was either cheap white canvas sneakers or cheap Chinese flats. The canvas sneakers because they were part of the dress code at my crappy retail job straight out of college; the chinese flats because they were pretty and cheap and I thought they made my feet look smaller. I would occasionally try to buy a pretty pair of pumps or slingbacks or whathaveyou, but I usually reverted to those. In fact, I wore those through most of my 20’s, for the previously stated reasons, except for brief flirtations with granny boots during my Stevie Nicks/Dramatic Art Personae phase. Camille Paglia once said something to the effect that she learned, finally, to dress like a woman from drag queens; and although that was not literally the case with me, the sense of approaching feminine dress as an alien, an outsider, rings entirely true. While I never did really learn to be a feminine woman, those were the shoes I felt confident in. They were light and didn’t weigh my feet down. They were part of how I thought of myself, in chinese flats and small cotton sneakers.



Of course, the end result of all of these ¼” thick soled shoes was bound to come home to roost at last, and it certainly did. I’ve noticed over the last several years that I need Better Shoes. As my knees and back are already a bit fragile, when the feet and legs and everything started to ache, well, it was time.


Dang.


Things I had never considered before—things like, oh, arch support and soles more than ½ inch thick and padding and…ew…innersoles started to become part of my lexicon. One of the things I had always loved about my thin, cheap shoes is that I could actually feel the ground I was walking on, which was a good thing. I’m a classic absent-minded bookworm, and rarely watch where I’m going. Having shoes that would transmit the state of the ground I was walking over was a good thing. But the cheap shoes were hurting my feet. Time to be a grownup, and get grownup shoes.


So about a year or so ago, there was a sale on LL Bean penny and tassel loafers—and lo and behold, they actually fit, so I ended up buying four pairs for an obscenely low price. And when I went to get sandals this summer, I bought the big, chunky, more-tread-than-an-SUV’s-tires type of sandal. Okay, they look nice enough. But not pretty. Not dainty. Not feminine by any stretch of the word. The world of cute and feminine is pretty far away from sandals or loafers like that. And they choke my feet to death—heavy, clunky, I can’t feel the ground and stumble more often than before. Let’s face it, people—I started OUT clumsy.


But there’s a certain dreary virtue in growing up, wearing sensible shoes, and buying things that will withstand the test of time and have a certain value. Yes, I know I am grown up—yes, I know what’s good for me—yes, I’m wearing the “good” shoes, folks, at least most of the time and I know that in the long run my legs and back will thank me for it.


I cheated.


Dear NSR, I cheated. I know they’re bad for my feet, but I needed some black, non-sandal, breathing shoes to lead my tours with, and this week I bought….Kmart $5-sneakers.


They have the teeny thin sole I remember so well. They’re cotton and cute and make my feet look small, at least, if not dainty and femme and flirty. They had that peculiar rubber smell when I bought them, like new Barbies, and they’re soft and flexible, like I imagine ballet slippers to feel. And I can arch and wiggle my feet in them, and the ground is transmitting little messages to me—stone here, grass here, concrete here, carpet here….it’s like recovering your sight after being blind.


Oh, I know it’s not really any good. My feet are, indeed, sore after wearing them for a few hours, and my legs get tired and I know I have to switch over to the Sensible Shoes tonight, or I’ll be a hurting puppy. But really, it’s not that much different from any other attempt to recapture youth. Go out dancing all night? Stay up til dawn? Pull an all-nighter studying? That was bad, but not catastrophic, when I was 20. At 32, all that’s left of me in the morning is rubble if I try to pull that kind of stunt.


And the shoes aren’t much different. I know I’ll be sore and tired and might begin to hurt again. But for right now, I’ll wiggle and flex my feet and listen to the messages that the ground is telling me. In these shoes I can at least pretend I’m springing across the stage in grand jete’s, running through a park, dancing techno into the wee hours. In the heavy, rigid, Sensible Shoes, it’s hard to even picture those things.


Don’t get me wrong, dear NSR—I rather enjoy being a practical middle-aged lady. Being young was definitely not what the movies tell you is should be, and I for one did not enjoy the experience. The knowledge that I now control my own fate, that no one can take things away from me just for being who I am and saying what I think—the painful conformist ideology that you have to endure when you live by the charity of others…. Thank you, I’m happy to have my own roof, even if it is rather humble and rented. Heck, I managed to get back to the dentist this year—and get my wisdom teeth removed—surely, I can survive wearing sensible shoes. And I like the authority they lend me, even if it’s in my own head. A Person Who Understands Arch Support Has A Good Head On Her Shoulders, you know.


But still, it’s worth a little bit of soreness to remember when I was young, and could wear them for 12 hours straight, and did, and the ground always spoke to me. And I could pretend I was always wearing ballet slippers, and had tiny feet.


That’s worth $5 and a footrub, don’t you think?

6:11 p.m. - 2002-08-02

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