A couple of weeks ago I went down to Illinois for a boot camp the
company I work for sponsored. While I am always in favor of education I
was a little upset mainly because I was going be gone on my daughter's
birthday. What I learned at the conference was valuable for me because I
was able to talk to a certified pedorthist about what kind of feet my
children have. (If you thought that reading a daylog of mine was going
to get you away from yet another footwear related writeup you should
have known better however this time I'm going to talk about why I write
about shoes).
The other day my boss told me I was doing a good
job. For the month of May my name is on top of the performance list. One
of the things my boss mentioned during my review was that I was good at
my job because I genuinely cared about other people's feet. Part of
what makes my job difficult are the people I work with and the other
thing that frustrates me is seeing people walk out of my store without
shoes that would be good for them or with shoes that I know will not be
good for their feet.
Because my feet hurt I am sensitive to the
pain of other people. If you tell me that your feet hurt and you disdain
a shoe that you find amazingly comfort I'm going to discount your claim
of pain and if you talk someone out of a shoe that they think feels
great I am going to question your integrity. Your feet are the
foundation the rest of your body depends upon. Throughout my work day I
see people whose feet have been permanently disfigured. Most of these
feet could have been helped had their owners understood what I'm telling
them and there are a lot of people who wish they would have met someone
like me a long time ago.
Sometimes I have to give people
information they don't want to hear. The other day a ten year old girl
came into the store I work at. Already her feet hurt and in my opinion
it is simply an unresolved support issue. Certain types of feet have a
predisposition to foot problems. If your foot is flexible and you have a
tendency to pronate your foot could develop bunions. People with
bunions are also more likely to have hammer toes. Having
the proper support can avoid bunion development and while you can't
get rid of bunions once you have them you can delay their growth by
giving your foot the support it needs.
Both of my children have long, trim, narrow feet. While their feet
are probably more attractive than mine they are both at risk for
bunions, hammer toes and plantar faciitis. For people with low arches
and flexible feet it is absolutely critical that their feet are properly
supported. A lot of the people who come to see me and my coworkers are
shopping there not because they want to but because we are willing to
work with them and the feet they have to live with for the rest of their
lives.
One of the things I struggle with is whether or not I should stay
married. Intellectually I understand that every relationship is going to
have its ups and downs. If you thought I was the perfect wife you were
mistaken however I can not live with someone who does not support things
that I feel passionately about. I'm sure anyone who has come home from
work after a long day can appreciate the way that I felt when I opened
the door and found that my oldest daughter (who keeps begging for a new
pair of orthotics) now has a pair of Crocs.
For exactly one
year I've been working for a company who understands what kind of damage
Crocs can do to feet. While Crocs do have some cushioning ability there
is inadequate support in them and apart from flip flops I would have a
hard time thinking of a worse shoe you could put on someone who has a
low arched flexible foot. My husband is a big believer in internet
research so he went online to find sources supporting his claim that
Crocs are not bad footwear choices for people. According to him
WebMD actually recommends Crocs
for kids although it is interesting to me that the recommender sells
his own brand of CrocsRX.
There are a lot of people out there who
have a great deal more education than I do. While I know more about
shoes and feet than the average person I am not an orthopedic surgeon, a
podiatrist or even a certified pedorthist so my husband claims that I
do not know what I am talking about when I tell him that Crocs are not a
good choice for their feet. Today I had a woman with three broken toes
hug me after I helped her find shoes that would work with her healing
foot. That woman will have to have her toes rebroken and set properly
because she didn't think going to the doctor was necessary for broken
toes.
No one I work with has any sort of medical degrees or training but I
do believe that most of us know our limitations. I still have much to
learn about shoes however there is also a lot of knowlege that I have
acquired. I know what I know, I know there are things that I don't know
and I know that having someone disrespect my professional opinion is not
something I am going to put up with. I don't know what I'm going to do
other than purchase good shoes for my children and this is what I
struggle with. If I leave my kids are going to have more exposure to
their father's parenting ideas but if I stay I'm showing them that it is
okay for a husband to disregard his wife and not respect her personally
or professionally.
I grew up in a home where a father put down
the mother of his children. Today my mother makes pretty good money as
the fiscal manager for a privately held company that works with federal,
state and local governments to help under and un-employed works get
more training and better jobs. My father is living on disability and
unable to work because of his Parkinson's disease. For the most part I'm
more like my father than my mother and I don't want my children growing
up thinking that I'm stupid and my opinions are invalid merely because
their father says so.
This is probably an abrupt way to end but
I don't have the answers and right now I'm too mad to think about
positive ways I could handle my daughter and the Crocs. Tomorrow is my
day off. I had planned on taking the girls shoe shopping and I guess
what's really making me mad is the whole passive aggressive way this was
handled. My husband knows I feel strongly about Crocs but he went out
of his way to get my daughter a pair and maybe you agree with him that I
don't have a medical degree so I'm not qualified to give diagnostic
information to people but I know that those shoes are not good for her.
For
whatever reason I care about the feet that are attached to people I
can't stand and my argument to them is always you can't afford not to
take good care of the feet you have because you don't know what kind of
damage you could be doing to them. Hopefully tomorrow will be a much
better day. I kind of doubt it and if you've ever wondered why I write
things like day strangers it is because I need an escape from the
things I can't handle and a home I can't get out of. I know that man is
out there, I know that woman is frustrated and if I can give them a make
believe world where things work out maybe I can get away from my own
reality for a while.