Bigfoot

To return to my previous thoughts on shoes, my first Fluevog purchase wasn't entirely a success. Fluevogs are crafted in limited quantities. I rashly bought a half size up when I learned that the pair I'd been salivating over for nearly two years was not available in my size, and it could be months before any more were available, if ever. They seemed okay when I tried them on in the store, but proved, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be one half size too large after the leather softened, which was roughly one day. They were wickedly comfortable even with the extra room in the toe. And I got compliments on them everywhere. I was not accustomed to having anyone compliment my shoes. It was an odd sensation.

If I were a completely different  person, I might've held onto them forever.  But for my mom, who wears a size ten, at height five-foot-three. Staring at her abnormally large feet in my younger years left me terrified of having big feet when I grew up, or even the appearance of big feet. My parents haven't been any help.  During my pre-teen awkward phase, I was less than five feet tall, Ethiopia skinny, had an overbite, and adult size feet.   I've been size 7.5 since I was eleven.  To my prejudiced eyes, they seemed like scuba fins.  It was horrendous.  I don't know if the pre-pubescent bigfoot phase only happens to girls?  My parents, being thrifty, spent my childhood buying me shoes a size up, on the assumption that I'd wear thick socks until I grew into them, and by the time I outgrew them, they'd be worn out anyway.  They started buying me size 8s at age eleven, and are convinced that's my size to this day, as they have proven when buying me thoughtful Christmas gifts like new snowboard boots. 

Anyway, every time I looked down at my feet in those beautiful boots I could not help but see someone afflicted with gigantism of the metatarsals. I left the slightly oversized Fluevogs at Chris and Sara's house after I moved out, because I planned to sell them on eBay and use the money to partially finance another pair - and Sara had an eBay account.  At that point, I didn't even have an internet conection. 

I eventually bought a different pair in the proper size, and have never looked back.  But I lamented the first pair.  It wasn't so much buyer's remorse as sorrow that such a magnificent pair of boots was going unused. Sara liked the look of them very much and tried them on - but they were impossibly large.  This was in the first trimester.  Her feet expanded to a size 8 during her pregnancy, and since I never got around to selling them, she is now the owner*. Which is nice, but did nothing to cure my bigfoot phobia, especially when I remember Nancy Botwin announcing in the first season of Weeds that her feet grew a size with each pregnancy.  Puzzle pieces started coming together.  My mom probably started adulthood with a size seven. And then had three kids.  Poor thing.  I've been so critical.  I'd previously understood that one's feet would swell during pregnancy, which made sense considering the extra weight, but I assumed they'd shrink back to size along with the rest of you.   Not so.

I thought that the pain of childbirth was our punishment for eating the apple. Physical disfigurements - such as vaginas stretched beyond the point of recovery and the swollen and loose-skinned post pregnancy cat belly - which sometimes doesn't go away - weren't part of the deal. Please, you've taken enough. Leave our shoes alone.

I can't close this topic without pointing out that two full posts about footwear has me kind of disgusted with myself.  Shoe obsession has always struck me as ridiculously girly, which I've never seen as a good quality.  I used to go out to bars with a male friend of mine and he would try to pick up**.  We several times discussed that he would only talk to girls who looked like they were wearing comfortable shoes - girls wearing heels or anything at all impractical may as well be wearing sandwich boards that read "High Maintenance".  I was a jeans and sneakers kind of girl, and emphatically agreed.  When Carrie Bradshaw used "shoegal" as her e-mail username, I was embarrassed for her. 

Crap.  First I go on and on about shoes, but a Sex and the City reference?  When I'm trying to redeem myself?  I'm not helping my case.  Grrr.

Hockey.
Wrath of Khan.
PBR.  Tall boys.
Emotionally detached sex.

That's better.

 
*She wears them all the time.  I think it must be love.

**Note:  girls do not make good wing-men for boys.  Especially a girl as adorable as myself.  I expect that his male friends were already settled and not interested in going out to alternative rock dance bars while he tried to meet girls, and as a wing-man, I was preferable to staying home by himself.  Maybe he got some pity attention when single ladies thought I was his girlfriend and would go express their disgust after I did a bunch of shots and then slipped away to make out with someone else?  Actually, scratch that.  Girls make magnificent wing-men.  Think about it.  I don't know that it ever worked, but what a way to get a girl to talk to you.  You don't approach her and come across as awkward or dirty (either way, just some guy trying to get laid).  She comes to you, with sympathetic feelings.  Once she finds out I'm not your girlfriend, you're already talking.

I also tried to convince this friend to use one-liners from Army of Darkness as pick-up lines***.  He refused, saying he'd get slapped.  I insisted that yes, he might take a few hits, but there was a girl out there who would find it hilarious, and she'd be a keeper. 

He's engaged now, and no longer requires my wise counsel or my service as an unlikely wing-man.  I take some credit for the engagement, however.  Had Sara and I not started a fake Lavalife profile**** so we could help him troll for girls, he and his fiancee may never have met.

***

"Yo.  She-bitch.  Let's go."

"You know, in my own way, I am king.  Hail to the king, baby."

"I've got plans for you, girly girl!"

"First you wanna kill me.  Now you wanna kiss me.  Blow."

"Slip me some sugar baby."

To name a few.

****sexpanther69