I have a question!

[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.

Comments

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

I, too, do not believe in shoes. My dad hated it so much that every time I would come into the house he would demand to look at my feet and if they were dirty I wasn't allowed in until I had washed them off.

Still, I do not believe in shoes.

[conuly]

Oh, I *believe* in shoes. They exist. I also believe in cats, snowflakes, and clouds. But not sidewalk glass. Any incidence of sidewalk glass is merely a statistical anomaly, and cannot be considered proof of the entity.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

A shoe didn't stop a rusty, mud-covered nail from going through my foot. I got a tetanus shot and went home with a hole through my foot.

Fuck their stupidity.

[conuly]

Heck, forget that. I once had a thorn, a wooden THORN poke right through my shoe.

Didn't bother with a shot, just pulled the thorn out.

[xmorningxrosex.livejournal.com]

I think if I were trying to convince someone to wear shoes (although I'm not sure why I would), I would be more worried about dog/bird poop than broken glass. Although, my dad did step on broken glass at a beach once, and my cousin did step on a rusty nail, and I did get a staple stuck in my foot as a kid, I'm a lot more worried about poop. *shudder*

[rachelkachel]

I see lots of glass on sidewalks around campus. But then, I walk by a lot of fraternities.

It doesn't stop me from going barefoot occasionally, when my flip-flops hurt my feet.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

The nail went at least two-thirds through my foot, after passing entirely through my shoe.

MY SHOE DID NOT PROTECT MY FOOT.

[conuly]

Okay. It's fair to say "there could be glass" when you can point to an incidence of glass. But here, there isn't. There is the very icky "gum so old it's black and a lot of people don't think it's really gum", but I wear shoes in those areas.

[conuly]

I would be more worried about dog/bird poop than broken glass

Oh, seriously. I'm smart enough to avoid doggydo, but not other things?

[conuly]

Two thirds? *shudders*

The thorn just went in a bit and hurt. Wow.

How thick were your soles? A lot of people wear hard or thick soles. Bad for the feet, but maybe more protection in their minds?

[the-turtle-girl.livejournal.com]

Go barefoot! Screw the damn glass...I have stepped on glass, nails, screws, needles, and lit cigarettes and I did not get tetanus or die. I still prefer being barefoot over anything else.

So, now you have at least one person that is urging you to go barefoot!

[minkhollow]

...Can you even get tetanus from broken glass? I thought it was rusty metal that caused the problem on that end.

[conuly]

I've stepped on some of the above as well, without getting cut. And sometimes I did get cut, but funnily that was always in my basement or backyard, not the big bad scawwy world.

[conuly]

You get tetnus from a type of germ, not a type of material. And they were also afraid, I'm sure, that people just wantonly tossed nails in the street and left them to rust.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

It was about 1984, and I was running toward my home through a woods wearing sneakers. The next thing I knew, my foot had stuck to the ground, halting my ability to run. I stopped, looked down, and saw my foot on a wooden rail of some kind, perhaps a section of door or fence. I pulled my foot with both hands, and it came off. I saw a big nail sticking up, but thought nothing of it. I kept running. When I reached my home, I realized I felt some discomfort in my foot, sat down on the steps, and took off my shoe. I saw a tiny circle of blood on my sock.

I took off the sock and saw a puncture wound on the bottom of my foot. Based on the length of the nail I saw, and the fact that my shoe was flush to the level of the wood out of which it came, I can tell you it must have come within a half-inch of the top of my foot.

My soles were standard 'Eighties sneaker soles, perhaps Nike.

[conuly]

Wow. *stares in awe*

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

It was my left foot.

I told my family, we went to the hospital, they gave me a tetanus shot, said there was nothing more they could do, and my family and I went home. That was it. The wound closed, leaving a small scar. For all I know there's still rust and mud in my foot.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

Don't believe the shoe hype. :)

[eirik.livejournal.com]

eh.. the only foot type injuries I sustained while I ahve bare feet were the result of jumping off a railway trestle into water and hitting a rock on the bottom (40 foot drop into about 10 feet of water)

that's it after 28 years of barefootedness. but if I feel I need the extra protection? I wear sandles.. which cause inmy mind more injuries to me.

[conuly]

I always feel safer in bare feet. Okay, there's a slim chance I could miss seeing something and cut my foot - but I could just as easily cut my hands chopping dinner. More easily, really. No shoes have the traction of my feet, not that I've found. And I fell enough growing up that this is Very Important to me.

[eirik.livejournal.com]

eh danger for me comes from small explosions and being set on fire.. I"ve badly cut my feet maybe twice... I"ve been set on fire 19 times.. lol

so you're safe statistically it's highly unlikely that you'll set on "street Glass"

A theory...

[queengodzilla.livejournal.com]

Common superstition?

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 Satan on 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;

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

I like to go barefoot, mostly.

Unfortunately, if I go somewhere I'm going to do a lot of walking, I have to wear shoes cos I have a talipes foot & wear splints to correct.

I was only in danger of glass in my feet when I used to go clubbing a lot at 18-20.

The biggest danger around here is duck poo(hard to see sometimes as it's green & quite liquid). It washes off easily enough, though.

I say go barefoot as you have none of those issues as far as I know.

[rachelkachel]

My grandma told me a story about my uncle - he stepped on a railroad spike, and it went all the way through his foot and his sneaker. And it was attached to a board, so she grabbed the board and the foot and pulled them apart, wrapped his foot in towels, then took him to the hospital.

And then there's the time he was in college and jumped out of bed onto his exacto knife.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

Yes, but did he have his shoes on in bed?