My Quirky Obsession

I have to admit that I am very picky when it comes to my shoes or boots, they have to fit just right for me to wear them comfortably. When buying a pair I can't go in and just grab a pair of shoes in my size off of the shelf, sometimes I end up trying on every shoe in that size, and sometimes all the shoes in the half sizes close to my size before I find one that fits my foot.

Needless to say I can spend a lot of time shoe shopping, also I have noticed the older I get the looser I want my shoes to fit, I have actually gone up a size and a wide shoe is a must.

Cindy's Dad won't even go shoe shopping with me anymore. He is actually one of those people who can just grab a pair in his size and be comfortable with the first pair he sees, so with this said he has no patience for my quirky obsession with correctly fitting shoes, I have even tried on a pair where the left one fits but the right one doesn't.

When I was a kid growing up in South Carolina we hardly ever wore shoes. I remember walking everywhere barefoot, we played outside, rode our bikes, climbed trees, anything that could be done in shoes as a kid we did barefoot, there were exceptions though, going to school, church, or Grannys house we wore shoes, but anything else the shoes were missing.

I guess my feet were tough back then, but now I don't dare go outside without shoes on my feet. One of the side effects of being a long time diabetic is neuropathy which causes you to lose sensation in your feet and hands, I can't exactly explain how this works on most people but it is really strange to me.

My Doctor can take his little tack and poke around on my feet and legs with me feeling nothing, he does the tuning fork test.......nothing, I once had a brown recluse spider bite on a toe and the Doctor at Urgent Care poked around on it....nothing, gave me a shot in that toe....nothing, dug what he called a core out of the middle...nothing, you get the idea.

But let me have a sock twisted or get a sock on the wrong foot and my whole world comes apart, yes I actually said "sock on the wrong foot" I can't feel anything else but this gives me a sensation that I cannot handle.

I love new socks and I could wear new socks every day, and they have to be the right socks also, I don't wear any socks that are sewn where the seam runs around the end of your toes, I buy all the same sock and when the new ones come out, the old ones go away, because after a few wearings socks take on a personality all their own.

A new sock can be grabbed out of the package and worn comfortably, they give you such a good feeling, a feeling of happiness, joy, euphoria, nirvana, I could even say complete ecstasy......pretty bad for a guy who can't feel his feet.

A worn sock takes on the characteristics of the last foot it was on, have you ever grabbed a pair of socks from your handy dandy sock drawer and noticed that the sock is a bit tight on your big toe but has excess material sticking above your pinkie toe? This sock is on the wrong foot, take it off and move it to the other foot, it will fit that foot just fine.

Now if you already have a sock fitting just fine on the other foot, you have a mismatched pair of socks, two lefties leaves me going back into the sock drawer because in there somewhere is a pair of righties folded together.

When they get to where they are all mismatched, it takes me a while to get my shoes on because I want to straighten out the mess, now when I find an non-ambidextrous sock, one that doesn't fit either foot to my satisfaction then it's time for new socks.

All socks should be ambidextrous you are thinking, but don't fall for that marketing ploy by the worldwide sock industry, they will market their wares as ambidextrous, making you think their socks will fit either foot, but there is a fine line between truth and fiction, we have proven that fact right here.

A sock may be ambidextrous right out of the pack, but like I said earlier it will take on a personality that suits only one foot, you will start seeing this now that I have pointed it out for you.

Remember the tube socks we wore back in the seventies, a tube sock was supposed to fit anybody or any foot, anytime. Just how quickly did they form a spot where your heel was? Now get that puppy twisted and you had what looked like a lump on either the side or top of your foot.

Excess sock material sticking out of your shoe where your heel was last time you wore them. With this said it's beginning to make sense to have a right and left sock isn't it?

Now think of the tube sock with a heel formed sideways to the toes because you wore them with the heel material on the side, now think of the stripes, you have to match the correct heels and toes with the matching color stripes, this is another reason why I hated tube socks.

It's a good day when I have correctly fitting socks on my feet to slip into my correctly fitting shoes, I reach for my correctly fitting hat......but that's a whole other post.

Is there something you are particular about that others call quirky?