One Sunday not so long ago I stopped to help a young woman at church to her car after she broke a heel on one of her shoes. She tweaked her ankle pretty good and by the time we made it over to her car it was already starting to turn purple, so I knew it was going to be painful. And when I refer to a heel, I am not merely talking about the half-inch kind, I'm talking about the ones that raise you up high enough that the air is thinner. This sort of foot abuse has always evaded my good sense and I cannot thank the good Lord enough for that. In thinking that she might be unable to drive I offered her a ride home, but she politely declined. The last thing she said to me in her tear-filled rage was this (and I quote), "I'm just going to go home and cut up pictures of men." For some reason her phrase weirdly stuck in my head, and I pondered just what she meant by it. Was this like that (one of the few times in my childhood I heard my mother swear) time I heard mom say she was going to hunt down the guy who invented panty hose and beat an apology out of him. Was this woman trying to shake off a bad breakup? Did her farther abandon her as a toddler? Did she have a stepfather that abused her? Of course, any explanation seemed plausible since I had no idea and never will.
The conclusion I kept coming back to was that for whatever the reason she was blaming mankind and their penises for that fact that she was trying to negotiate a set of concrete steps while wearing a pair of stilts that just happened to be covered in suede. Understand I still felt somewhat bad for her but blaming my gender for her carelessness just wasn't going to help her cause, at least not much. Then it occurred to me that maybe women are not angry about ungrateful children, the smoker in their carpool, the complexities of menopause, or even running out of cold cuts while packing school lunches. Maybe all of this time the culprit was just high heels. Is it possible that the reason some women are angry is simply because of high heels? As a man we are only privy to the information women tell us about, everything else is provided to us on a need-to-know basis which is usually never. So, this was yet another American quandary.
An old welder I worked for years ago had this ritual he would perform every time he bought a new pair of work boots. As soon as he got them home, he would rub the inside and outside down with mink oil, fill them full of water, and put them in the freezer for about three days and allow the ice to expand. Then after the stretching happened, he would put them upside down on a fence post and allow them to dry. He claimed that would eliminate the breaking in process. I cannot say with any certainty if it worked as I never tried it. It sounds plausible albeit a bit unhinged. My friends, this is how we should break in all shoes. Think of the purchasing of shoes a bit like buying four new Firestones for your car. It's just a fancy (and sometimes expensive) way to keep your heels off the pavement. This is the literal equivalent to the saying "where the rubber meets the road."
Some of you are not old enough to remember it but during the 1985 Oscars actress Cybil Shepard broke all the unwritten rules of Hollywood foot etiquette and rocked a pair of orange Reboks with a black cocktail dress on her red-carpet appearance. This nearly restored my faith in humanity. She may have been the only woman to do that up until then, or even since. At any rate, I can nearly guarantee she was the only woman there that night experiencing any level of comfort. A woman will pluck, tuck, scour, dye, and wax anything on their bodies that will set still long enough to receive the punishment. However, you can hang your hat on the fact that that if they encounter anything in the house that scurries or bites you will find them perched on top of a kitchen chair letting out a shriek that would kill a Clydesdale.
Therein lies not only the rub but also the absurdity, which you know I love and cannot help but point out. And not even I have the heart to tell the woman in my life that mice can climb, and spiders can jump, that would just be too much like adding full-blown insult to life-changing injury. I'd hate to be the one responsible for making her lose her sanity, that is her daddy's job. Only he would be cruel enough to put empty locust shells on the girl's shoulder. Not even I am that cruel. I once showed her a piece of lint I dug out of my belly button and then shortly figured out I had gone too far. Most of the time men have no idea where the parameters of decency are, nor do we care until it's too late.
In 19th century China young womans feet were bound as a status symbol and it permanently changes the size and configuration of their feet. Was this a clever idea? Probably not. But it seems that since the beginning of time people have been obsessed with feet and that won't change anytime soon. Remember when you could buy a pair of flip flops at the beginning of the summer for two bucks? Do you remember when they only came in three colors, black, gray, and brown? At some point some Hollywood fashion mogul found out they could glue some fake bling on a pair, make them high fashion instead of merely swimming pool attire, and charge a bloody fortune for them. Encapsulated within the last sentence is everything that is right and wrong with America. If it can be made in a Chinese sweat shop for a dollar a well to do type who is totally out of touch with the masses can figure out a way to break it off in your back side. You are welcome!
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