While waiting for the GF at the train station the other evening, I tried to read the latest novel by My Friend the Novelist. I got about 6-7 pages into it but I kept getting distracted by people coming out of the station. In situations like this I have a habit of giving them names and dramatic backstories – all of which will make for a lovely post some other day, but time is short and instead I’ll mention one part about the evening in particular. This one woman exited the station and stopped by the bench to get her phone out of her purse when I noticed how cute her shoes were.
My first thought was “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just thought that to myself…” followed closely thereafter by a solemn promise to never again spend an another entire Sunday afternoon flipping between a Queer Eye marathon and What Not To Wear. Not that they are bad shows, but in the future I’ll need to intersperse some Spike TV and ESPN in there to keep myself more balanced mentally.
But then I looked back at the shoes, and I realized part of why I was fascinated wasn’t how they looked – it was the engineering. You see, I’m accustomed to women’s shoes actually being attached to the foot with multiple straps, laces, and indeed – entire top surfaces. But this one appeared to be helped in place mostly by a tiny strap looped over the base of the woman’s toes and her foot-sweat acting as an adhesive*. I was fascinated, but I tried to appear disinterested so as to not appear like some foot-fetish weirdo lurking outside the train station reading a chick-lit novel targeted at teens**.
After a few minutes of rummaging, she actually started walking away in these things. And it appeared as though it took all the clenching power of her toes to prevent the shoes from flying off in random directions. And thus – I discovered yet another reason why it’s better to be a boy: with the exception of an occasional undone lace, we can pretty much forget about shoes once we put them on in the morning.
It also made me thing that maybe bunions are nothing more than the building up of toe muscles because the wearing of toe-clenching shoes forces the toe-biceps to bulk up like post-1990 Barry Bonds on the “clear”. That said however, these shoes got my attention – which was perhaps the entire point.
Mercifully though, by that time the GF had shown up and saved me from ruminating about this stuff for the rest of the evening. Thank goodness.
* Not unlike the picture on the right, but with a strap about half as wide..seriously, imagine it with only the black part
** Yeah, not the demographic I ever want to find myself lumped into
My first thought was “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just thought that to myself…” followed closely thereafter by a solemn promise to never again spend an another entire Sunday afternoon flipping between a Queer Eye marathon and What Not To Wear. Not that they are bad shows, but in the future I’ll need to intersperse some Spike TV and ESPN in there to keep myself more balanced mentally.
But then I looked back at the shoes, and I realized part of why I was fascinated wasn’t how they looked – it was the engineering. You see, I’m accustomed to women’s shoes actually being attached to the foot with multiple straps, laces, and indeed – entire top surfaces. But this one appeared to be helped in place mostly by a tiny strap looped over the base of the woman’s toes and her foot-sweat acting as an adhesive*. I was fascinated, but I tried to appear disinterested so as to not appear like some foot-fetish weirdo lurking outside the train station reading a chick-lit novel targeted at teens**.After a few minutes of rummaging, she actually started walking away in these things. And it appeared as though it took all the clenching power of her toes to prevent the shoes from flying off in random directions. And thus – I discovered yet another reason why it’s better to be a boy: with the exception of an occasional undone lace, we can pretty much forget about shoes once we put them on in the morning.
It also made me thing that maybe bunions are nothing more than the building up of toe muscles because the wearing of toe-clenching shoes forces the toe-biceps to bulk up like post-1990 Barry Bonds on the “clear”. That said however, these shoes got my attention – which was perhaps the entire point.
Mercifully though, by that time the GF had shown up and saved me from ruminating about this stuff for the rest of the evening. Thank goodness.
* Not unlike the picture on the right, but with a strap about half as wide..seriously, imagine it with only the black part
** Yeah, not the demographic I ever want to find myself lumped into
Comments
Just to summarize a few thoughts from the last couple of weeks of shoe-wearing.
Any man who notices that a woman's shoes are cute is just a hot bitch in my book.
Good boy. Keep it up ;)
And TOWWAS, that is hilarious and true. My shoes take also take a prominent role in my consciousness when they aren't my ol' standbys, mostly because I can't get my mind off how uncomfortable they are, and how far everything seems when one's shoes suck.
And despite my love of What not to Wear, I still don't buy their constant argument of "These sexy high heels will be just as comfortable as your Birkenstocks - honest!"