I hate buying new footwear. Doesn't matter if it's boots, sandals, sneakers, or flip-flops. New shoes of any sort have always meant pain.
I have rather vivid memories of walking home from school with wearing new brown shoes and bloodstains. And the next day making the same journey with smaller bloodstains and bunched up bandages futilely trying to protect the open blisters on my ankles. This went on rather sadly for years with new shoes and old shoes until I figured out that I always needed to put on bandages whenever I put on footwear.
I tend to put off buying replacement shoes to the last possible moment. And then knowing that the shoes only mean pain, I often rush through the process just to get it over. Is the sneaker a palatable price? Yes. Is it a tolerable colour? Good. Does it fit? Seems to. And then out of the store. I went through this ritual one morning recently and thought I found a good match even if the sneakers are too white and are ugly.
I take them home. A couple hours pass and it's time to put them to the test: bandages, the athletic socks, and the gleaming sneakers. My left foot is very happy, my right foot is not so sure. I head out to try to find some dirt to shuffle through to take the shininess down a notch. I come home in agony. My left foot is now deliriously happy. My right foot wants to be put out of its misery.
After several days spent agonizing over the waste of money and my willful mutant feet, I face the facts and head out to buy another pair of sneakers. I manage to find the next size up in the same style of not entirely hideous and still-on-sale sneakers. They too seem to fit and I trundle home.
Before boxing up the first pair to donate to the St Vincent de Paul and after moaning and groaning about how happy my left foot was in the first pair, I decide to try an experiment. Size 8 on the left foot. Size 8 and a 1/2 on the right. Amazing. They pass the walking to the grocery store and back test.
It's as if the heaven's have opened and shown me the way. My feet are different sizes. The mind boggles: all those years with painful blisters and thousands of bandages.
Anyone out there who needs an 8 1/2 left and an 8 right?
Heather
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