Eight Feet Deep

Old Squeaky. You could hear him a mile away.

That was me today. You know how new shoes some­how tend to squeak when you first walk in them? Well mul­ti­ply that sound it makes by a fac­tor of about five and that should let you know how squeaky I really was.

The shoes I wore are one of two new pair of Ambu­la­tor Dia­betic Shoes I was given by the VA in an attempt to lessen the pain from my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy that makes my feet feel as if they were shot, stabbed and set on fire. I have only had worse foot pain once than I am hav­ing nowa­days. That was the Night of the Cruel Shoes.

My friend from col­lege, Clay, had a very nice and large wed­ding when he mar­ried Katie about 12 years ago. Another friend, War­ren, had been Clay’s room­mate in col­lege and War­ren and I were two of the six or seven grooms­men attend­ing the groom. Of course, we were wear­ing the rented tuxes which, unfor­tu­nately, came with rented shoes.

Now as I men­tioned, my friend, Clay the radi­ol­o­gist, had a very nice wed­ding so this is noth­ing to take away from the wed­ding. But the shoes turned out to be liv­ing hell as time went on. War­ren and I went on to call them “Cruel Shoes,” which is the name of the best-selling 1979 book writ­ten by come­dian, actor, etc., Steve Mar­tin as well as the title of one of the book’s very funny essays. Need­less to say, or per­haps not, that the rented shoes were not black and white pumps with two left feet and …

” one had a right angle turn with sepa­rate com­part­ments that pointed the toes in impos­si­ble direc­tions. The other shoe was six inches long and was curved inward like a rock­ing chair with a vise and razor blades to hold the foot in place. ”

Our cruel shoes were black and rented. God only knows how many feet had been tor­tured in those shoes I wore in Dal­las that night. That’s all right though. The bride and groom know how much we care for them and would endure pain to make their wed­ding a most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. I still hadn’t seen the videos.

My dia­betic shoes aren’t cruel from what I can tell. Just squeaky. At least the pair with the Vel­cro straps are. The other pair has shoe­strings. They don’t look too bad. They are def­i­nitely more expen­sive than I would pay for — here is the shoe on a retailer’s site – all but prob­a­bly hik­ing shoes. Think­ing about hik­ing shoes makes me sad because I don’t know if I am ever going to hike again with this con­stant pain. But if the new shoes aren’t cruel shoes and help get me through the day then I guess I can han­dle the squeak until they get bro­ken in properly.