The Case for Shoes

   Perhaps the most painful stereotype of the glamor model clique is the shoe, or rather, the shoes.  Shoes for today, shoes for tomorrow, shoes for running, shoes for walking, shoes for flirting, shoes for dancing.  Shoes to catch the eye, to distract the eye, to redirect the eye, to dazzle the eye, to hurt the eye.  Shoes to wear around the house, to the mall, in front of cameras, in the car, on the couch, asleep at night.  Women are obsessed with shoes.
   Not so with us men.  Oh no.  We wear shoes only for utility.  That's why we have shoes for work, for hunting, for hiking, for marathons, for fishing, for boating, for dancing, for...... oh, wait.
  So clearly, we have a cultural fixation with shoes.  I'm wearing some right now;  Nice looking running shoes.  They have a bunch of thorns stuck in them, but that's a result of living in the Virginia countryside.  In my closet, I have a pair of work boots(which I have not worn for awhile because my obnoxious feet are too big), a pair of narrow cowboy boots, dress shoes, soccer cleats, and basketball shoes.  I think, other than Mass on Sundays, I wear only the ones on my feet right now. 
   But clearly, I succumb to the culture of shoes.
   Often, however, I go barefoot.  There's a certain joy you get as a kid squishing mud between your toes that I refuse to give up, kind of like CS Lewis and his fairy tales.  Lewis said that as a child he would hide to read fairy tales, lest others think him not as grown-up as he should be, but that at fifty he read them openly and unabashedly.  Quite simply, in adulthood we shouldn't shun the natural pleasure of childhood; we should accept and understand them even more.  Early this morning, while my toes were freezing off in the most convenient shoes I could grab(someone else's flip-flops) and I passed the fowl going through the woods and the firewood fortress, I discovered that, somehow, the ground was warmer than the floppy things that were protecting my tender flesh.  It was softer, too, more friendly and familiar.  The obsession with shoes seems to have protected the human foot from all the harsh pleasures and happiness of the raw earth, saving us from the glories of the ground.
   Of course, I then stepped on a particularly sharp acorn, and remembered that there are still pluses to shoes.
   But what is it that keeps the modern, western adult from permitting any contact with the earth?  Granted, I'd wear thick soles over most urban areas, and in any non-domestic building, and, yes, doing anything strenuous outside, but there is happiness of a forgotten age in the dust and dirt.  Our Guineas bath with nothing but dirt, and it keeps them cleaner than most animals on earth.  (Then, of course, they go and dust-bathe is a pile of ashes, and run around looking like ghosts, leaving a gray cloud behind them.  "Fun" is too mild a word for what they were having.) 
   As with any technology, shoes should not become the Golden Calf, dragging us away from that simple pleasure of the ground.

     Remember, O Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.