* Polyester and Princess Reeboks

I'm not certain how to broach this subject...it's on every woman's mind, but most women are really hesitant to speak out loud about it. I am also having a difficult time organizing the post because there is so much to put into it today. So I am just going to dive right into THE topic...our feet.


Several times a year I get the "urge to purge"..my house, that is. The Urge to Purge has emerged..and as I was purging the drawers in my bathroom, I opened the FOOT DRAWER!

Let me explain how this all happened and why I have the FOOT DRAWER.


For years, everyone has known that my very best feature is my feet. And despite what gravity and time have done to the rest of me, my feet really hung in there until five years ago. For the past 13 years, I have worn Princess Reeboks to school. I am sorry but my feet began to hurt then and I just had to do whatever it took to be able to teach, short of losing 40 pounds. Princess Reeboks and white socks were a staple in my closet. (Now I know that horrifies you Shoe Fashionistas, but you do what you gotta do. ) With all my other features gradually diminishing, even though they hurt, my feet still looked great. They were soft, uncalloused and with a little pearl polish, they could pass for a teen's feet.


A side note: I have a very good friend, Miss Anonymous, who has made it her life's work to keep her feet as nice as mine. It hasn't exactly worked, but she's possibly a close second. So every few months she orders, purchases, spies or somewhere unearths a new method of keeping our feet nice. (Notice: "our".) She always buys or alerts me to the new "way" to have our 20-something feet stay 20-something. So begins the saga.


Five years ago I was introduced to backless shoes. (Now, I have passed the stage of being obsessed with fashion. You know this time has come when you are drawn to a Bon Worth window and your eye falls on a great matching 100% polyester outfit with elastic in the pants waist and the pants are $9.99 year round! These pants and shirts NEVER wear out..You couldn't kill those things if you tried. YOU will die before that polyester does. ) So it came as a great surprise to my cohorts when I arrived at school wearing backless shoes. Then the obsession moved to backless Reeboks (Princess, please, forgive me), backless house shoes. I just couldn't get enough backless shoes. I got to the place that whenever I wore any shoes with a back, I was in pain and that's not a pretty sight. Everyone knows when I am in pain, it's written all over my gravity stricken face.


Here is the prob. When you constantly wear backless shoes, the bottoms of the shoes hit the bottom of the foot and your heel. Yep! You guessed it! For the first time in over five decades, my heels became, let's say, slightly "texturized". My husband told me we'd never have to worry about having a match striker in the house, because my heels would do the trick. Whoa!! Wait a minute! My "soft as a baby's back end" heels could strike a match? Suddenly my dear friend's remedies didn't seem so audacious. So the FOOT DRAWER grew. Potions, several of which contained acid, pumice rocks, stones, scrapers, files, lotions to name a few. Then we moved onto QVC and their eggs and handled eggs, electric mini sanders and on and on. There isn't one thing on the "pedicure" market we haven't tried except those flesh eating fish...WBTW completely gross me out. With a little help from certain "sanders" and lotions, my feet have returned not to their once glorious state, but pretty darn close. So there's always hope.


I would like to tell you that there is a happy ending to this dilemma, but I can't definitely say it's a done deal. Getting old is just extremely difficult. There's so much real estate to cover and so little eyesight to do it with and so little time every morning. But, I can tell you one thing, I put my foot down when Miss Anonymous tried to get me to use my husband's palm sander..I think she's just trying to move into the #1 Best Feet For Ladies Over 50 position!

Lessons to be Learned:

1. If you ever call a friend and there is a strange noise in the background, it's probably her using the palm sander on her feet. Call back later, I understand it's very difficult to stand on one foot and sand.

2. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) eventually wears out except Bon Worth polyester.

3. Everybody needs a friend like mine who is TRULY concerned about the well being of their friend's feet.

One more BTW: We Sensible Shoes girls see you Designer Shoes types limping to your car after work every day...you'll be in SAS and Reeboks before you know it. Come to your senses before it's too late.