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sisterelwood
2009-02-09 04:56 am UTC (link)

Social conventions also include things like "White people shouldn't marry black people" and "men shouldn't marry men." Social conventions are a cop-out.

She is seriously, SERIOUSLY comparing wearing shoes to these issues? Sweet baby Jeebus.

Why we wear shoes TL;DR:

Our feet, unlike those of our fellow primates, do not have the tough bottoms or fur-covering to protect and keep them warm. I'm looking at the paws of my cat right now and lemme tell you- his little paw pads are a lot tougher than the bottoms of my feet. ADDITIONALLY- it's called SHIT ON THE SIDEWALK. Go step on some broken glass or a rusty nail a few times and then tell me why you shouldn't have to wear shoes. I don't like shoes very much either but I'm not walking around ANYWHERE that isn't my own backyard while barefoot.

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	dechant 2009-02-09 05:51 am UTC (link)
	Hell, here in Upstate NY, it's called "snow". <-- does not even step onto the deck barefoot between October and May (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	agent_hyatt 2009-02-09 06:20 am UTC (link)
	I don't think it can be called "snow" anytime after the first day. It all too soon becomes "muddy, salty slush". (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dechant 2009-02-09 06:22 am UTC (link)
	Out here in the 'burbs, we get crispy blissful scenes in the backyard, but yeah, the roadside goes grey right quick. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	platedlizard 2009-02-09 10:01 am UTC (link)
	Poor Dear. lives in Portland Oregon where it rains all the time, but usually only snows two days a year. Except for this year ~~because of Climate Change~~for some strange reason. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	erototoxin 2009-02-09 07:54 am UTC (link)
	From what she says about her amazing impermeable callouses, I think she DOES have tough bottoms like our fellow primates. (Reply to this)(Parent)

your_face
2009-02-09 07:58 am UTC (link)

Our feet, unlike those of our fellow primates, do not have the tough bottoms or fur-covering to protect and keep them warm.

This. I've got some nice stories about pressure-treated wood splinters and feet that make me want to wear shoes forever.

Also, I can never seem to convince people that walking around barefoot on all our artificial flooring and concrete is actually worse for your feet than shoes...the pressure put on the feet is nothing like that of natural terrain.

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	also_not_a_pipe 2009-02-09 09:52 am UTC (link)
	I was already severely wasp phobic, but the couple of years I lived in Wisconsin our yard get terrible infestations of yellow jackets or whatever they are that live in underground burrows and are incredibly vicious little bastards even for hornets. That was twenty years ago, but still, fuck all if I'm walking around barefoot even in my back yard. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chibikaijuu 2009-02-09 10:30 pm UTC (link)
	One summer I got a yellow jacket stuck between my ankle and the strap of my sandal while walking across the grass to get to work. I had to hide in the back office and cry (and then sleep because of the benadryl) for an hour. After walking up the stairs to actually get to the office. At least I know the little bastard got well squished. (Reply to this)(Parent)

moonjaguar
2009-02-10 01:13 am UTC (link)

That's why I won't go barefoot in the yard. Even if I wasn't allergic to venom, I'd still be allergic to the idea of getting stung by some stinging thing. Times I stepped on bees were just, well, bees minding their own business getting pollen and I felt kind of bad. Yellow jackets, ugh, I hate when those nasty foul-tempered bastards. They're on my shit list with roaches but at least roaches don't sting.

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also_not_a_pipe
2009-02-10 03:18 am UTC (link)

Our house was on a hill, with a sort of natural bowl in the backyard. One afternoon my younger sister and I were playing a game with our neighbors next door that involved running down one side of the bowl and up the other. I think I would have been around seven or eight, which would make my sister five or six.

So the neighbor kid had a go, and then it was my turn to run across the bowl. And as I came up to it I saw a couple of yellow jackets come up from the ground and doing that zig-zaggy I WANT TO STING YOU dance of theirs, so I veered off and went straight up to the second-story deck. I see no reason why I would not have been yowling about teh beez at that point, being that now I just freeze and hyperventilate if a wasp comes within a yard of me and that's having learned to manage my phobia since I was a kid. But for whatever reason my sister ran across the yard and they swarmed her and got all into her hair and clothes so that she brought them in the house with her.

Somehow she managed to only get stung twice, but the main thing I remember about it was that I ended up curled up and sobbing in the bathtub because there was a bee in my room, and I wouldn't go down to the ground floor for like three weeks after because I didn't know for sure the bees were down there. But yeah, to this day I don't go anywhere without shoes.

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	caffeine_fairy 2009-02-09 11:54 am UTC (link)
	Also, calloused feet don't have the grip that shoes do on tiles and other slick surfaces... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mary_mac 2009-02-09 02:36 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, there's a reason we were never allowed to sail with bare feet, even though all of us had feet like leather from tearing about on shingle/mussel beds all the time. We obviously were not walking barefoot on mussels, we were not insane, but neoprene wet shoes are basically being barefoot with more rubber treads, so you end up with the callouses anyway. (Reply to this)(Parent)

theladyfeylene
2009-02-09 07:36 pm UTC (link)

Our feet, unlike those of our fellow primates, do not have the tough bottoms or fur-covering to protect and keep them warm.

But you can build up the tough, pad-like bottoms!

I'm a barefoot freak, I hate wearing shoes, and my feet are...well, let's just say no one ever gets to see the bottoms of them due to how calloused and weird they look.

But even I still wear shoes of some sort when going shopping/to a restaurant/whatever. It's not that hard a concept to grasp!

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velvet_mace
2009-02-09 11:06 pm UTC (link)

Eh, the tough bottoms we got. Well, okay, you don't have because you wear shoes all the time, but you ever have to give up shoes, in about a month you'll get a nice thick callus, capable of walking comfortably on an amazing variety of unlikely surfaces -- without getting injured, or foot diseases (even on dirty floors).

It's really the person who usually wears shoes who decides one afternoon to run around barefoot who has the problem.

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	adverb 2009-02-09 11:06 pm UTC (link)
	One of my friends has had, in the same year, three rusty nails, a knife, a rusty half a soda can through his foot. He still ran around barefoot - although, in his defense, we lived in near rural Virginia, it was summer, and he was nine. (I was always too big a wimp to build up calluses, so I wore shoes all the time. Incredibly beat up day glo colored shoes.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

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