Life it too short to wear tight shoes.

“Life it too short to wear tight shoes.” That’s all the card said. No kicker line inside. The kicker line was this immutable truth.

So why, despite a lifetime of experience, do I still not want to believe it?

My friend Anne sent the card. A few days prior, I had called her complaining. It was the usual litany: “My feet are killing me. I can’t believe I bought these shoes. They seemed so comfortable in the store. Blah, blah, blah.”

I have lived more than half a century on this earth. I have been buying shoes for how many years? You think I’d get it right. Live and learn. They go together. Except where shoes are involved.

My newest shoes, which I wore last Sunday on the only day of March when it wasn’t raining, snowing or sleeting and a person could wear shoes and not galoshes, are open toed, cloth and have a moderate heel. They are not Cinderella fashionable but they are not hiking boots, either. And at the store they fit like the proverbial glove. Well, almost. The right shoe WAS a little snug at the instep, but that would stretch with wear, while the left shoe was a little loose at the heel, but that could be fixed with an insert.

So the shoes weren’t perfect, but what shoes are? How can they be? Someone new to this planet could look at a hat and figure out that hey, this belongs on a head! Same with gloves and pants and shirts and even earrings. But shoes? Specifically shoes with pointy toes, thin soles and stiletto heels? The only clue to where on a human body these things belong is that both shoes and feet come in pairs. But that’s it. If an alien hung spike heels from two ears it would make better sense than trying to force Barbie doll shoes onto human size feet.

I’d certainly have been better off hanging my new shoes from my ears than attempting to walk around in them. They hurt from the second I put them on. Why is that? In the store they had been almost accommodating and so full of potential that I actually bought two pairs, one in navy, which I wore and one in black, which I have to take back. I had found, I thought, a perfect balance of style and comfort.

Until I got them home. Then, like some men after they get married, they did a complete turn around. Supple turned into plaster-cast stiff. And snug turned into total torture.

This has happened before and not, I confess, infrequently. Sometimes you out and out KNOW that a shoe doesn’t fit but you buy it anyway because it looks great on your foot, never mind that you can’t walk. Or because it’s a designer shoe on sale for less than half the original price and who cares if you have to squeeze your toes together to keep the shoes from falling off. Or because the color – mango, peach, plum - is so right for a suit you have that so what if the four-inch heels actually propel you forward. Minor details. We are talking feet and fashion, ladies and gentlemen, and in a shoe department, for some reason, that is all that matters.

“Forget fashion,” Ellen from “Mind Body Connection” told me last year when I hobbled into her place of business, my feet screaming for help. “Loose the heels and get cushioned shoes. Heels throw your entire body out of balance. It isn’t natural to walk around on three-inch platforms. You need to listen to your body,” she said.

I traded down an inch. That was the best I could do though I promised her and my feet that I would give up heels and switch to sensible flats, though I heard, loud and clear, what Ellen, my feet and my body were saying.

But in the shoe store there were other voices. “Those flats are ugly. No! No! No! Put those boring loafers back. Come over here. Be daring. You only live once. Look at these. Try them on. No pain, no gain. These make you look tall. Who cares if they pinch? Who cares that you teeter when you walk? Come on. How far do you walk on an average day anyway?”

The shoe sirens lie. “They’ll break in. They don’t hurt that much,” but the lies are sweet and even though you’ve been lied to before, even though the sirens have never once told the truth and your feet are trying to remind you of this, and are screaming, “Hey! Remember us? What are you doing? Put those killer shoes down,” you buy them anyway, the three-inch heels, the flimsy straps, the sling backs that don’t stay on because when push comes to shove, you go for fashion over function.

Life is too short to wear tight shoes. My feet know this. But my mind?

I seem to lose it in a shoe store.

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham