Hobbling Around

One of the reasons that I like to collect purses is because they don't have to fit and they don't hurt me. Unlike shoes, which have caused me varying degrees of torture my whole life, usually inversely proportionate to the cuteness of said shoe. (I still have scars on the sides of my feet from a pair of ill-fated patent leather pointy toed flats that I wore in middle school in 1986. They were from Payless and I loved them. They'd actually be in style right now...)

I'm thinking of this age old dilemma today, because I just got some very cute new sandals. The first pair are thse Ralph Lauren brown strappy sandals:

And the other pair are a brand I'm not familiar with (XL?) and they are also brown, but sport a wooden sole and are chunkier.

So, yesterday, I wore the wooden soled shoes and minced around all day, trying not to rip the shit out of the tops of my feet. At the end of the day, I was the proud owner of a big cut across the top of my left foot due to the stitching on my shoe lacerating it with every step I took. When I got home, I put the shoes in my secondary shoe closet and tried to forget about them. (Because, full disclosure, the shoes were from the Goodwill, so I won't return them. Although, I will probably donate them back. I'm such a philanthropist.)

Today, I took the Ralph Lauren sandals out of my main closet and slipped my feet into them. I found that if I walked very carefully on carpet, they didn't hurt. After a few steps to my elevator, the left foot didn't hurt at all, but the metal accent ring on the right foot dug into my middle toe and was so painful that I had to take them off when I reached the parking garage and rifle through my trunk to find a pair of shoes that I could actually walk in. (I have a bag of stuff to go to the thrift store in the trunk of my car, but I sometimes end up pulling stuff out of the bag and giving the item in question a second chance. Today's saved item was this pair of brown round toed slingbacks that I bought at Target a while back. They do not offer undying love to my feet, but they don't draw blood.)

So, I have two questions. The first question is, why in the hell do shoes feel sort of ok in the store, but once I wear them out, they slice my feet to ribbons? The second question is, why are women's shoes so goddamn uncomfortable in the first place? Am I going to have to start wearing Crocs? (God forbid.) Or orthopedic sandals like these?

Yeah, that's it. I'll start an orthopedic sandal trend. That would be kind of cool....right? Right?