I have a question!
Oct. 2nd, 2004 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
I go barefoot. A lot. Every chance I get, in fact. I hate shoes. Now, for years people told me to cut it out because "you might step in glass or something, and die of tetnus". (They eventually stopped. I think they got tired of always being wrong). I'd always reply, reasonably, that I didn't see any glass, and that if they could show me some glass I'd be careful to walk around it. This always, ALWAYS prompted/prompts the response:
Well, there could be glass!
I don't understand that. There is no glass. Look up the street. No glass. Look down the street. No glass. Simple observation will tell you that there is far less glass on the street than most people commonly believe. Were there glass, one could easily walk around it, the same way one walks around dropped toys and other dropped... things. I am neither blind nor stupid. I am perfectly capable of seeing obstacles on the ground and not walking on them. However, it does not matter. There is never any glass. I have seen glass on the sidewalk so rarely that I can actually list up the times. And most of the times, the glass was right up against a building, not in the middle of the path.
What confuses me is that, when confronted with one of life's harsh realities, namely the fact that there isn't any glass, people always say "but there could be!" as though this means I should take excess precautions where there clearly isn't any glass (or rusty nails, or lit cigarettes....)!
Why do they do this? Why don't they say something else? I'd even "what would you do if there were?", because that opens some sort of discussion (not much, what I'd do is walk around it). But not only do they expect me, apparently, to protect my feet against imaginary dangers, they also don't like me looking around and pointing out that these dangers don't exist! And I just don't understand that.
Well, there could be glass!
I don't understand that. There is no glass. Look up the street. No glass. Look down the street. No glass. Simple observation will tell you that there is far less glass on the street than most people commonly believe. Were there glass, one could easily walk around it, the same way one walks around dropped toys and other dropped... things. I am neither blind nor stupid. I am perfectly capable of seeing obstacles on the ground and not walking on them. However, it does not matter. There is never any glass. I have seen glass on the sidewalk so rarely that I can actually list up the times. And most of the times, the glass was right up against a building, not in the middle of the path.
What confuses me is that, when confronted with one of life's harsh realities, namely the fact that there isn't any glass, people always say "but there could be!" as though this means I should take excess precautions where there clearly isn't any glass (or rusty nails, or lit cigarettes....)!
Why do they do this? Why don't they say something else? I'd even "what would you do if there were?", because that opens some sort of discussion (not much, what I'd do is walk around it). But not only do they expect me, apparently, to protect my feet against imaginary dangers, they also don't like me looking around and pointing out that these dangers don't exist! And I just don't understand that.
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A theory...
Date: 2004-10-01 09:55 pm (UTC)It's like a story I once heard: A girl sees her momma cut the roast in two halves before the woman puts it in the oven. She asks her momma "Why'd you cut the roast in half?" and the mother goes "I did it because my mother did. Why don't you go ask her why she did it?" so the little girl goes to the grandmother and asks her why she did it and the grandmother goes "I don't know. My mother did it. Go ask her." So the little girl goes to her great-grandmother and asks "Why did you cut the roast in two halves before putting it in the oven?" and the great-grandmother says "Because my oven was too small for the roast as a whole." XD And those women mindlessly carried on that tradition for no other reason except what they saw their mother do.
Maybe it's like that with the whole "ZOMG! You'll get glass/nails/tetanus/
the wrath of Satanon your foot! AND DIE!" Maybe in the earlier days it applied more, but not now. And maybe people got so used to the warning that they still apply it today.As for me, I'm a born and bred country girl. Been barefoot most of my life! The only time something impaled my foot is when I stepped on a honeybee. It stung my heel and I didn't notice anything walking until I felt heat in my heel. I turned it upwards and there was a struggling insect on it. I screamed and went inside and had my grandparents and mother take it out. They were like "That's what you get for not wearing shoes!"
XD;