Skip to main content

Foot Binding

I have worn a size 12 shoe since high school. No matter how snug the shoe was, if I liked it, and if it was a size 12, that's what I bought.

Then, about a year ago, I had my first experience with gout. Boy is that painful. Even then, it never dawned on me that moving up in shoe size might be a good idea.

Last week I went to a shoe store that still uses salespeople -- ones that still measure your feet. And I learned sometime. In length, my foot is indeed a 12. But other parts of my foot measure out to 13.

The salesperson said I might be binding my feet. That image stuck with me, and I decided to buy a size 13 as a test.

So far, so good. I'm now in the process of throwing out all of my "snug" size 12's. Don't ever get too attached to a number.

Comments

  1. There seems to be surge in shoe companies putting more specialized soles in for comfort. I wear a 13 and just ordered some new dress shoes (from the JC Penney catalog) that I could barely get my foot into. That was the first time a 13 was ever too small for me. Upon closer inspection of the shoe, I found it to have more padding in certain places compared to other shoes. I then tried to order a wide size of the same shoe, but they were out. Maybe we should just make the floors at RCTC softer!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Do you remember that David Letterman used to wear sneakers with his chinos? Make I should bring back that look. Dan, if you and I brought back that look together, we could start a trend... and I'm sure our foot would feel a lot better, too. Function and fashion. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X.  It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether.  And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it.  So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants.  The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

In Utero

  In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history.  She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process.