If you know me very well, you know that I am not a foot person. Some people may respond that that’s an understatement. I don’t like being touched by other people’s feet, and I don’t like them touching mine. Would I like a foot massage? No. Would I like my toes painted? No. Leave my feet alone. They are mine, I can take care of them myself, thank you very much.
What gets me even more than people trying to touch my feet or trying to make me touch theirs, is socks. I will not wear shoes without socks, but I cannot stand touching socks that have already been worn. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been worn of even if I was the one wearing them. If they’ve been on feet, I don’t want to have anything to do with them. To me, socks that have been one feet = sweat soaked grossness. BUT ANYWAY…
I’m sensitive about my feet in other ways too. I only ever want to wear sneakers. If I have to dress up, I’ll go as far as putting on some heels that have the toes covered. This doesn’t mean that I don’t like the cute little flats that all the females are wearing now. They’re totally cute! My problem is that I look at them and think about jellies and shudder.
Some of you may be thinking, what the heck are jellies? If you were a female growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, you would not be asking this question. I feel sorry for you, I really do!
Jellies are the stinking coolest shoes that were ever invented! They were sandals made out of semi-colored jelly-like plastic. You could get them in either pink, purple or clear translucent. My favorite were the pink with sparkles.
My sister and I wore these every summer, all summer long. They were our FAVORITES! They made us feel pretty and made up, but there were two problems with them.
The first problem is that they always disappeared. You see, as a child of the 80’s in Eugene Oregon, one of our most common haunts was Papa’s Pizza. Every get together, birthday party, and after t-ball party was held at Papa’s Pizza. They had the most entertaining and ridiculously huge playground ever imaginable. It had a merry-go-round that wasn’t quite so merry. There was a playhouse-thing that had tubes to crawl through, a tower to sit and play telephone in with a bunch of random kids (one always had a dirty diaper that stunk up the joint), and for the older kids who were too mature to just run around like crazy gerbils, it had a dark cavernous hideout in the body where they could drag a friend to tell secrets or take their playground “boyfriend” to practice the art of kissing. Heck, there was even a giant wood wheel that kids could run on, which gave more credence to the simile above, or where they could trip and roll around underneath all the other kid’s feet.
My favorite though, was the ball pit. It was AMAZING. I could pretend to swim around in coins like Scrooge McDuck through his coins in Ducktails. I could throw the balls out at my sister to get her attention and then duck under to hide. My love for the ball pit was equal to my love for jellies, and therein held the problem.
You see, every time that we would go to Papa’s Pizza and were let loose into the play area, both my sister and I would head right for the balls and jump in! We didn’t have time to follow the pesky rules and take our shoes off. The problem was, when we came back up. One or both of us would come out with one less shoe, and two very upset parents.
I cannot tell you how many times this happened. You may ask why we didn’t wise up and take our shoes off before we jumped in. Well, smarty pants, we did. And it didn’t matter because whenever we left our jellies in the shoe cubby outside of the ball pit, they’d be stolen by the time we’d get out.
It got to the point that my parents refused to buy us jellies anymore. I remember going to Fred Meyer as a kid and crying with my sister because we were given a firm “no” when we begged and pleaded for new jellies. Every time she’d take us over to pick up a new shoe, no matter how sparkly and girly it was, we’d just pull her back over to the jellies shoe display and tell her that was all we wanted.
When it finally got through our heads that we weren’t going to get jellies, we just sat in silence while our Mom picked out our new shoes. There was no way we were going to help her. If she insisted we got something else, she would just have to take care of it. That would show her.
So, I got sneakers. I was not happy with it and almost refused to wear them, but when you’ve gotta wear shoes, you’ve gotta wear shoes. So I slipped them on and was immediately surprised. They were so comfortable! It was amazing.
You see, here’s the second problem with jellies. They’re made of plastic! Sure, it may be a jelly-like plastic, but they’re plastic nonetheless! Just imagine being an active kid in the summer time who has sensitive skin and doesn’t do well in heat. Then think of wearing plastic sandals that have holes in them. As an active kid, you run around everywhere you can get away with. This means bark mulch, pebbles, grass, and dirt get stuck between your warm, sensitive skin, and plastic. Just typing this out is making my feet burn.
Because of jellies, I cannot wear shoes without socks because of think of the plastic chafing against directly against my skin and rubbing in debris of the outdoors into my feet. This means no cute little slip on shoes, and absolutely no flip flops (which I physically cannot figure out how to walk in away…but that’s another story).
So, I’m left all year round wearing my sneakers. But I have to say, I have some pretty awesome sneakers! Kangaroos anyone? 