Do we truly take the time to appreciate our feet? If we were to take a deep dive into the fascinating world of pedal lore (“pedal” being the technical term for those floor-hugging appendages), we might find some interesting facts are to be found.
If you’re a regular reader, you may be wondering where I’m going with this topic. There is something here for everybody, I assure you.
Let’s go over some quick but boring stuff first: the word “foot” has old English, German, Saxon and other European roots. The foot itself contains 26 bones and 33 joints, and on average a male foot is about 26.3 cm long (or 10 1/3 inches). The most common fetish is that for the human foot.
The foot takes on the task of helping us walk. They take on our weight as we locomote through life. We buy shoes to make them comfortable. Some women, howe3ver, endure discomfort to buy shoes that simply look good but cause immeasurable pain. Not me. I prefer comfort, but there are plenty of styles out there to flatter any foot and wallet.
We also protect our feet with socks and hosiery, and we have beauticians trim and polish our toenails. At least some of us do. I have never indulged in a mani-pedi, but I did have a manicure. Just one. Made me too self-conscious about damage (I felt self-conscious about bowling with them) to return for more.
Occasionally a minor change to the footwear routine can alter how our feet work for us. Last year I went to the shore with my comfortable sandals, but one pair turned on me and subjected me to a huge blister, topping it off with savaged ankles. I never saw it coming; nothing happened back at home. But isn’t that the way of things, to suddenly not work after constant reliability.
This year I went to the shore with different sandals and back-up hosiery as well as bandages for any emergency. At least my tootsies didn’t disappoint. The straps which had been worry-free for ages suddenly decided to cut into the tops of my toes, leaving me with cuts in three places.
How did I discover this? I took the sandals off at the edge of the tide before dipping my feet in the water. Nothing like the icy, and salty, Atlantic Ocean to jolt the senses when washing over open wounds and cause an immediate reaction. Fortunately I was facing into the roar of the waves, so nobody heard my inhuman howl of discomfort.
When your feet hurt, you’re in for some serious inconvenience. The ancient specialists in torture knew this well, with such brutal devices as bamboo splinters under the toenails, crippling with blows and piercing implements, or having the feet set upon by insects or rodents.
In Japan, women endured a painful tradition of foot binding, disfiguring the foot to make it smaller and more appealing by societal standards. That is a Cinderella story, indeed! Remember that in the original fairy tale, the evil stepsisters mangled their own feet hoping to fit into a slipper. I guess poor Ella had a rare shoe size in those days. And shoes weren’t customized for wide or narrow feet.
Our oldest folk might recall that for a while, shoes used to be sized by length and by the heel (as well as the foot) width. This practice went away some time ago. Still, shopping for shoes is a task which takes time and patience to be done correctly. Shoe stores still exist which measure your feet (in the US, with the always intriguing Brannock device) to give you the best fit, so pain and discomfort should be nearly zero.
Life, of course, puts our feet through some torture every day, anyway.
I may never win the battle of shore feet, but I’m sure going to keep trying. Now I simply need to give my cuts time to heel. . . .heal. Meanwhile, I will toe. . . .tow the mark.
Told you there would be something for everybody. Even bad jokes. But no footnotes.
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