Another "Barefooter" is Born

    When I was born I came out barefoot, and this seemed perfectly natural to this new baby. My feet were the first part of me that I identified with – could be because they were the largest body parts I could see – and I quickly discovered that even though they were all the way down at the other end of my wrinkled little body, I could control their every move and I happily waved them in that bright hospital air.
    
    While lying there innocently admiring my feet, something called a nurse suddenly wiped me down and then proceeded to shimmy a pair of fuzzy little blue socks onto my naked feet. As I helplessly watched her dress each foot, but not the rest of my body, I discovered that along with having happy feet I was also a happy boy – that is until those fuzzy socks smothered my toes and my feet weren't so happy anymore. After the nurse had finished, I cringed when I saw that my feet now didn't look like the rest of my body because of those socks. I wasn't blue and fuzzy looking anywhere else. I wondered why those were the first of my new body parts to be covered up so quickly while the rest of me was splayed out like a nudist on a lawn chair.
   
    Being the newborn that I was, I assumed that feet must be the most important body parts to keep covered up. Of course, I found out later in life that isn't true after I decided to remove all of my clothing at the grocery store while shopping with my Mom. She had to chase me all over the store like I was a criminal on the run (barefoot unfriendly stores still make me feel like a criminal). By the time she caught up with me sitting on bags of frozen okra in one of the freezers, my bottom was as blue as the socks I began life in at the hospital. To this day, I still can't eat okra thinking that someone might have been sitting on the those frozen veggies! 

    After that incident, Mom told me it would be okay if I took off my shoes and socks and to be barefoot, as long as I leave everything else on. That was fine with me because at that early age I decided I didn't like the feeling of having my feet covered up all the time. But who would have guessed that around the next corner of my life I was about to encounter "shy feet."  

    Around that corner I ran shoeless into being a self-conscious teen, and I suddenly became too shy to show my toes. Now, the only places that I would go barefoot were at the beach with my feet quickly buried in the sand (which made getting to the water much more difficult), when I went to bed immediately plunging them under the covers, and sometimes in the shower. Socks and shoes were permanent fixtures on my feet. Like the concrete shoes worn by gangsters anchored at the bottom of dirty rivers, my constantly shod existence was weighing me down with even more anxiety about my shy feet. 

    Not wanting to end up at the bottom of a river, I was determined to free my shy feet from those stinking shoes, and to rediscover the pleasures of being barefoot as much as possible. I wanted to be like a kid again when I went everywhere in my neighborhood sans shoes. But I would still only go barefoot where it was acceptable (like around the house, at the beach, and in the shower). I totally lacked the confidence needed to go barefoot in public places. I really wanted to, but I hadn't been able to defeat my "shy-feet." Eventually I started wearing flip flops to stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. I even had a job for several years where wearing flip flops was acceptable. That was as close as I could get to being barefoot in public, and that was good enough for now since I was taking baby barefoot steps toward developing a barefoot lifestyle for myself.

    But as most thick-skinned barefooters know, it doesn't take long before you don't want to wear shoes at all anymore, anywhere. The more you don't "shoe-it", the more you want to do it. So, I began walking barefoot in my neighborhood when I took the dogs on their walks, and when I would go get the mail down the street at the mail kiosk. But if I saw someone coming my way while out walking, I would change directions to avoid having to deal with the strange looks and not-so-smart comments. I also began driving everywhere without shoes on, but as soon as I arrived at my destination I would slip on the flips. I really just wanted to be able step freely out of the car and go into the store without having to get my feet dressed, but I just couldn't muster up the nerve.

    Then one day while sitting in my car in the parking lot of a local grocery store, nervously contemplating whether or not I should go inside without shoes on, I said out-loud, "Oh the hell with it, I'm going in." I summoned up one of my last nerves that I hadn't used in years and strutted barefoot from my car toward the grocery store doors. As I approached the doors I spotted the usual sign in the window displaying a basic outline drawing of a shirt with a slash through it, and depicted next to that was a cartoonish pair of bare feet with the same slash mark – Fred Flintstone must have modeled for whoever created those signs. Upon seeing that sign, I immediately froze in my tracks (freezing is a recurring theme with me at grocery stores). In a sweaty panic, I took a step backward into a warm glop of gum on the sidewalk and made a sticky retreat back to my car.

   But I was not deterred by this temporary setback. My growing desire to be as free of shoes as possible made me realize that my burgeoning barefoot lifestyle was being cramped, like toes in a pair of too-tight shoes, because of my "shy feet." That moment of realization led to my idea for a sole-less shoe that would look like I was wearing a flip flop thereby allowing me to venture forth into public places with my feet incognito. It was like putting on a pair of those goofy glasses and mustache disguises on each foot so no one would recognize the fact that I was not wearing any footwear. So that's what I did, well, not the goofy glasses thing, but I designed and assembled a pair of bottomless shoes and I call them "Streakers."