Crippled Little Feet

Ok, so let's talk about those sexy, non-cripple shoes I mentioned in the OLC premiere post earlier. The shoes with the heels and the straps that this little cripple can't wear because she has Cerebral Palsy and would literally kill herself with a single step. Crash! Neck broken in 5 places.

There are all kinds of sexy shoes for women who aren't crippled. I almost salivate over some of the shoes I see my un-crippled friends wearing or posting to Pinterest. That purple suede platform boot that hits above the knee and laces up the back? I want that. The snazzy little kitten heels with the peep toes? Yes, please. The only thing that keeps me from having a closet full of sexy, sexy shoes is the little palsy problem.

It's not just the walking. I have little palsied feet, too. Ugly little palsied feet. Displaced joints, toes that curl under, absolutely zero, zip, zilch, nothing, nada, no-way, no-how, in terms of arches. These things I call feet look like penguin flippers. And their lovely collection of deformities essentially makes them 2 different sizes: a shoe that fits comfortably on my ugly little right foot will squeeze my ugly little left foot to death. It's almost impossible to walk into a store and find a type of shoe that will fit both feet. I've just grown accustomed to one shoe always being half a size too big. And even if I could find a sexy shoe to fit both feet, and even if I could walk in it, I'd never, ever, wear a peep-toe. My ugly little crippled toes would scare people away.

And so you see the problem, yes? I want sexy shoes, but I cannot have them. I'm stuck with sneakers or ballet flats that always seem to have that dumb bow on them, as if I'm 5 years old and I want to go around with bows on my shoes like a pretty, pretty princess. And I have to stuff the toe of the right-foot ballet flat with toilet paper to make it fit. Classy.

I am not the only cripple with this issue. Orthopedic shoe companies have recently started trying to make their shoes more appealing to crippled women who want to join their non- cripple peers in wearing sexy on their feet, but it doesn't work. You can't un-uglify a toe guard or un-dork a Velcro-fastened Mary Jane no matter what other attractive things you do to the shoe. It's still an ugly shoe, and we cripples with ugly little palsied feet know this. We know this and long for the heels and the peep-toes that are forever before us like candy in front of a diabetic kid.

I mean, seriously. Compare.

We get this:

Ugly as hell

and you get this:

Sexy as hell

Crippledom has given me an acute sense of what is fair and what is not, and this whole shoe thing definitely falls in the "Big, steaming, pile of rotting offal" category. But my misfortune has given me yet another opportunity to make a horrible, make-the-non-cripples-squirm cripple joke --

I will make a Pinterest board and title it:

Shoes I Will Wear When I Can't Walk Anymore.

It will be hilarious. And sexy. Foot-fetishists-wet-dream sexy. 

I have pinning to do.