Yeah. I Have Them.

Mom found them somewhere several years ago, and gave me my orthopedic little red shoes.  As low as my pigeon-toed-ness looms in my life (it's something X may not even *know* about me - and X knows almost every possible thing anybody could know about me), I remember these shoes very clearly.  I hated them - of course ... vanity is hardly a new thing for me, and when you are six and stuck in conspicuously hideous, 1940s style red leather brogans when it's the 1970s and ALL the other girls are cute, clopping, stiff brogans are unnecessary to a tantrum-throwing extent.

And so, when they reappeared after thirty-five years of oblivion, I kept them.  They probably mean more to and about me than the little patent leather baby shoes my uncle bought me when I was an infant.  (And yep - I have those too.)  They have the character of wear - and are no less stiff with age than they felt when they were fresh, if never fresh looking, out of the hideous shoe store.  I have an ambivalence to them, now, deeper with age and physical pain, even than the loathing I felt as an unpopular and unfashionable little girl.

My mom didn't understand - they never do, of course.  She was pretty (I didn't know it explicitly, but I sensed she had never been the ugly kid I was).  She was sociable and got to wear good shoes.  I used to play in the shoes she had worn as a young professional lady, working at a bank (shoes I frankly emulate today, and thank goodness for the popularity of vintage styles right now).  She was everything I could not even conceive of hoping to be.  And she was mean, and tried to make me wear ugly shoes - all just because my TOE turned in.  Bitter life.


It's predictable beyond wasting a short story on it, but the shoes above probably contributed powerfully to my obsession with osteo-punishers - and I am unrepentant.

Ahh, but Guess is a pretty well made (amazingly comfortable!) punisher.  I can't call myself a sinner - and they were on sale.


***


I have downshifted in my workaday shoes.  1930s styles being good to go right now, I am loving a pair of Aerosoles with adorable, short, sturdy heels, good toe boxes, and generous insole cushioning.  And the red Rampage ones with the band across the upper.  And the beautiful sculpted-heel navy Circa Joan and Davids with, again, space for actual toes in the toe boxes - and practically ripped from my mom's single-days stylebook.

Saturday night?  Still goes to things like the Guess pretties above.  But I can't pretend age, taste, fashion, and de-escalating heel heights make an unpalatable style cocktail at this point.