The world's ugliest feet

My toes are stuck together, stumpy, and ugly. I can live with that.

However, the way my feet look in shoes...

Yikes. Like zip-locs full of lard, with a bad tan line, stuffed into a wire cage. Not a pretty sight.

Originally published August 10, 2009

I have issues with my feet.

I also have issues with shoes.

I have two pair of shoes. Three, if you count sneakers, which I don’t. 

I only have sneakers because someone keeps telling me that I have to exercise -- so I go, dutifully, and buy sneakers once a year to exercise. This year I had a bout of temporary insanity (it runs in my family and happens on a regular basis) and I started running. 

Hah.

It lasted five weeks. I ran 11 times, for a total of 12 miles, and spent $140 on a pair of running shoes, $11 for running socks and $5 for a cool iPhone app to let me know just how far I had run.

Which works out to $14 a run.

So no, sneakers don’t count.

I have UGLY feet.

Very ugly.

My feet are a size ELEVEN. That’s right, I said eleven. As in, most people who have size eleven feet are either men or are lucky enough to be a woman who’s six feet tall. 

But I’m the shortest one in my family of giants, the only one who doesn’t even make it to five-foot-eight, and I’ve got the biggest feet. 

How fair is that?

My toes are stuck together, my feet are flat and fat, and I have a permanent tan around my flip-flop line.

At my best friend’s wedding, I met a man with a foot fetish/phobia, (he said he had a “thing” about feet,) and I scared him into an almost comatose state by showing him my stuck-together toes.  We’d all had a bit to drink by that point, and I kept taking off my shoes and wiggling my toes at him. He was begging me to stop. Couldn’t handle my toes. Oh, the power! I reveled in his misery. Finally had to put my shoes on, though, when he threatened to throw up.

Not one of my finer moments.

So I have one pair of flip-flops, which I wear February through October, and a pair of moccasins, which I wear in winter. 

Occasionally I will buy a new pair of flip-flops, and when I do, I spend $70 and get a “real” pair, meaning one that’s from Hawaii or Australia and will last for the entire summer. I alternate sometimes with Birkenstocks. 

Whatever is comfortable, has my toes and heels hanging out, protects my feet on the bottom and won’t break.

Similarly, in the winter I occasionally veer from the moccasins into docksiders.

And that’s it. Two pair of shoes in my closet. I will never wear heels again, unless someone I love dies and they were the kind of person who would be offended by flip-flops at their funeral.

If I go snow camping, I might buy a pair of boots.

And yet, though I have had this weird thing about shoes FOREVER, the people in my family who haven’t yet accepted this (and there are more of them then you’d think,) have decided that the reason I don’t wear pretty shoes is because I don’t have any.

So they send me shoes.

They see a pair of size eleven shoes at a garage sale, or at a discount store, or even at a designer place, and seeing a pair that big is rare.

So their thinking must go something like, “Oh, there’s a size eleven! Poor Meagan always has to wear those horrible flip-flops because she can’t find any shoes in her size! If I get her these, she’ll start wearing cute shoes! And maybe she’ll paint her toenails!  Oh, and then she’ll feel so good she’ll get an outfit, an honest-to-God outfit, to wear with it, instead of the jeans and T-shirt she always wears. That’s it! All I have to do is buy these shoes for her and she’ll be cute!”

Because once a month, someone buys shoes for me.

The latest are above.

Are they the cutest shoes ever or the ugliest shoes on the market?

I honestly don’t know. My first reaction was hideous disgust.

Then I thought maybe they’re sort of cute. 

Then back to loathing.

But I tried them on anyway, just to see how my pale lumps of lardy feet would looked jammed into these delicate works of care and feminine charm.

Yah. Just what I thought.

There’s a reason I wear flip-flops, you know?

So just in case anyone is wondering what I need for my next birthday:

It’s not shoes.

Really. 

Even if you find a cute pair in a size eleven, and they’re on sale.