My Own Two Feet

I always wanted to have Barbie’s feet.

Well, okay, maybe not the wires that run from her heels to her thighs and allow her knees to bend with that clickclickclick clickclickclick so dear to a child’s ear. When it comes to the inner workings of our legs and feet, I clearly got the better deal.

Ah, but the shape of them: slender, high-arched, delicate – while I tromp around on Fred Flintstone feet: flat, fat and with no discernible taper between calf and ankle. My feet always worked, and for that I am grateful, but transportation aside, they did little for me and certainly seemed to go out of their way to scuttle my desire to attain the twin pinnacles of adolescence – beauty and popularity.

When I was a kid, my shoe choices were limited not just by income (low to middle) and size (short and wide) but by my mother’s insistence that I was allergic to rubber. I’m not sure exactly what was this based on, except that the elastic in her bras made her itch and left deep red grooves in her white flesh each night. She said, "You’re allergic to rubber, just like me." So the allergic to rubber thing was always there – sort of like my little brother. If there was a time in my life when either of them didn’t exist, I don’t remember it.