My first day in plastic Earth shoes

I have a terrible relationship with shoes. As a non-driver, I tend to walk more than most people, even in places where walking is nearly impossible, so I know that what I really need in my life is a good pair of athletic shoes. But as someone who's bad style in everything would make him the perfect candidate for a "Queer Eye" makeover, but who still delusionally considers himself well-dressed, I started noticing how tacky everyone in my office looked wearing Nikes while , holding down professional jobs as attorneys and editors. Forget that they were probably stitched together in a fly-ridden basement by some Vietnamese children with no other options in life,  they also started to seem like a symbol of everything wrong with modern culture - a symbol that boils down to one of two things: either we as Americans have so little expectation from life and so little respect for our neighbors that we can't bother to buy more than one pair of shoes; or that as a culture, we've come to dress as carelessly as we do our jobs and still feel superior without realizing that the rest of the world is mocking us. And sneakers aren't even cheap! You spend more on a pair of Nikes than you do on a good pair of cheap dress shoes. But furthermore, really... how many people wearing sneakers all day at work ever exercise? The people who are workout junkies are so particular about their gear that they'd never wear their sneakers to work, the same way they'd never work out in their dress shoes.

And since my exercise bike is basically a hanger for my pants, I kissed athletic shoes goodbye. Which would be great if I knew how to dress. I went to Lollapalooza in the mid-nineties wearing a tan Kermit the Frog t-shirt, khaki dress shorts, no socks, and a pair of brown loafers with tassles. My friend asked me if she could get a better look at one of my shoes, so I handed her one only to have her toss it ten feet into the parking lot yelling how much she hated those things. I tried to compensate the rest of the summer by wearing the same shorts and tassled shoes but with striped gym socks. Finally, I realized shorts and I had nothing to say to each other unless I thought there was a world clamouring for my hairy palid legs.

Meanwhile, as a NYer and a non-driver, as stated before, I would hike miles in the city with crappy-looking  Florsheims that weren't meant for extended use, and would always end up with huge blood blisters covered with bandages and neosporin. So I discovered the beauty of Doc Martins that existed without looking like Neo-Nazi boots - the ones that came up to the ankle but still had the stitching. Then later, Clark's - the world's great walking shoe. The new problems: when it comes to my own well-being I'm cheap. Thus, really, I only *do* wear one pair of shoes at a time, and don't realize that they don't all fit with all weather. I wear them in snow, rain and sun and end up not only with the same blisters, but with the soles litterally falling off. One recent catastrophe had me wondering what the flopping sound was while I was walking in a rain storm. It ended up being a huge strip of rubber under my feet that I had to rip off and carry in my pocket.

The other problem is that during the last five years I've become a fake vegetarian - an omelette-eating, sushi-munching, pizza-slurping non-vegan, but still... I started to realize that I wouldn't eat cows but I could wear them. Worse yet, after buying my last pair of shoes and commenting to the salesman how oddly comfortable they were, he told me "of course they are. There's nothing more comfortable than deer skin!"

I still have those shoes, and think of Bambi every time I wear them. And fawna or no, I still ended up in wincing pain during the first few nice days of this spring. So, I decided to hold my breath and walk into the vegan shoe store on Allen Street for my first pair of vegetarian shoes (while wearing my deer skins; I noticed that I seemed to leave burn marks on the floor wherever I walked with the yearling on my feet).

I told the saleswomen/owners the whole bit - nothing that looks like a sneaker, something I can walk in, I'm not buying two pairs, blah blah... I ended up going with the black Earth shoes. These shoes have a negative heel. I'm still not sure what that means. There's an impressive chart on the Earth web site that shoes me how my posture is improved by the negative heel. Also, how it's supposed to be like walking on sand. Basically this is what it feels like: I put my shoes on what are definitely the correct feet based on where the toes are pointing on the shoes, but I feel like they're on the wrong feet. There's a huge lump in the inner sole of each shoe and the first time I wore them I felt like I had my first understanding of what it might be like to wear high heels. The salespeople assured me that they took a few days of getting used to but that once I got used to the sensation I'd never go back. (This isn't a PETA thing either - the Earth company makes plenty of leather shoes).

They sat in the box for a week. Today, I woke up and tied on my shoes of synthetic leather-like microfiber and proceeded to wobble around my bedroom. Then I went out with my family to eat and walked over to the coffee shop with a book all in my new shoes. They're the first shoes I've ever stared at the whole time I've been walking. For one thing, they looked a little too much like sneakers at first. Then the more I looked at them, the more plastic they looked. I feel like I'm wearing the shoes from some giant sized plastic action figure who's going to come after me like the witch in the Wizard of Oz except with a GI Joe beard and Kung-Fu grip.

As for the negative heel - it feels like I now have all the pressure taken away from the spot underneath my toes where the blisters formed and it's all moved to the sides of my feet, which feel very sore. But after a full day of walking (as opposed to the three hours on the first day that the storekeepers suggested), my feet are remarkably comfortable, and that is a rarity for me.

And the bonus is, I still have my other shoes so I can color-coordinate. (Hey, that deer's been long dead. I won't wear any more of his friends and I've never eaten any of them, ever.)  Plus they claim to be made under fair trade conditions. And I'm wearing what I hear were a seventies fad.

Plus they go well with my hemp wallet. I may have found my shoe.

Comments

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