I've been blessed with what my mother refers to as "pork chop feet."
It's neither a sizable trust fund, an antique jewelry box, nor a collection of vintage hardcover novels that I have inherited from both my mother and my father. No, what has been passed down to me is the inconvenient genetic anomaly that is wide feet.
The above image is a picture of a Brannock device, a tool I was familiar with every time my mother would take me to the mall to buy new shoes for the school year. Placing my foot on the cool metal, the salesman would always comment on how wide my foot was (
and that I've grown another inch!). Having wide feet was, and still is, a pain in the ass. It was especially frustrating back then because I was relegated to certain brands of sneakers or, as a private school brat, brown loafers or black lace-ups. I could never wear the popular brands my friends were wearing. No Nikes, no Adidas, no Reebok. While young boys my age were running around in their trendy trainers and athlete-endorsed footwear, showing off their new pairs of aerodynamically named kicks, I was stuck sitting next to my fat-footed brethren at my local Thom McCann and being measured for a brand of sneaker called
MacGregor. Snazzy name, no? What sounded more like the name of a hot-tempered Scottish bartender turned out to be my (affordable) sneaker of choice throughout most of my middle-school career. It was an unfashionably plain white shoe with traces of forest green. It closely resembled a golf cleat, the kind middle-aged men would wear out on the courses along with their hideously designed polos.
Whether it granted me the ability to leap like Michael Jordan or sprint like an Olympian, I never knew. At that age - probably 12 - one would most likely find me participating in some not-so-sporty activities like studying that week's
TV Guide, searching for Waldo, or handwriting a short horror story in a spiral notebook after having read an inspiring novel about a group of prom queens being murdered one by one.
If I wasn't shopping for shoes at Thom McCann, I was accompanying my mother to the Naturalizer store in Yonkers, a retailer known for their wide width selections, and sitting next to women with names like Agnes and Edith, hearing them bicker about which orthopedics are best to wear on a bus trip to Atlantic City. Such was my childhood.
Looking on the bright side of it all, I never had the urge to buy the sleekest (and priciest) sneakers money could buy. I never had to beg my parents for a pair of black Air Jordans or slick, multicolored Adidas tennis shoes. Thus the chances of a bully threatening to steal my designer sneaks were low. I didn't have to worry about the neighborhood meanie sending me home barefoot in the rain a la
About a Boy. Did I miss out? I don't know. I had other obsessions (the aforementioned above) and concerns to keep me occupied as I made the universally awkward transition into adolescence and young adulthood.
Luckily, by the time I reached college, I discovered Sketchers and New Balance, brands that were wide-width-friendly and opened my eyes to a variety of designs that welcomed my feet with open laces. No longer was I trapped in a world of ugly footwear. No longer did I have to be ushered to the back of the shoe store in an attempt to find the perfect pair that would hold my pork chop paws.
Free feet at last, free feet at last. Thank God Almighty, I have free feet at last.
H.P.M.
*Anyone with wide feet got a story to share? Some frustration to vent?
In an attempt to see if keywords in the title of a post truly influence the number of page views, I have given this entry the above name. Consider this an experiment I'm conducting while doing my part on a soon-to-be-launched news site that's been in the works for the past two years (let's just say that I've been given the title Entertainment Editor). Exciting stuff.
