The Shoes Make the Man - Frustrated

Usually I leave the coy observations and snarky remarks to DC but I thought I'd kick in with a bit of my own testiness just to show that I'm not all fun and giggles. About two weeks ago I had what is being referred to as 'the shoe incident'. We went to a Tuesday night dance sponsored by one of our clubs and shall we say it wasn't one of my most stellar nights. The place was hot and I was tired and there are a dozen other excuses but when it comes right down to it my feet wouldn't do what I wanted them to do which was frustrating. Adding to that frustration was the fact that for some reason my shoes would not stay tied.

Yes, I tried double knots. Yes I tried working all the slack out of the shoestrings. Nothing worked - half way through a dance if the left one hadn't come untied the right one felt like it was about to fall off.

So, after the fourth untying, I went back to our table, fished for the shoe tongue that'd managed to work its way under my foot, and yanked it back into place.

…and it came off right in my hand.

Kinda felt like that guy in The Godfather - you know when he wakes up with a horse's head in his bed? Only I didn't have the Hollywood mansion, silk sheets, and I didn't actually scream.

So, as you probably imagine, this put me in the market for a new pair of practice shoes. I decided that I'd like something that was different but still something I wouldn't mind knocking around. No fussy, high gloss finishes and no suede shoes that I'd have to worry over. I thought that, with the whole world on the internet, surely there would be hundreds - possibly thousands of styles of men's dance shoes to choose from. And after a week searching I came to the conclusion that there are far fewer styles of men's than you might think. Essentially (if you eliminate the weird outliers like tap and ballet shoes) there are five types:

Practice Shoes
Oxford - Standard Heel
Saddle
Oxford - Cuban Heel
Tennis Shoe

When you get right down to it there are really only four types - salsa and ballroom shoes are essentially oxfords only with different heels…it just felt better to actually have one type of shoe per finger on one hand. I've been to the big shoe sites - DanceStore.com and Moonlight Shoes. When I find a shoe I like it comes in a vast array of sizes…three of them all smaller than a US 10 (I, of course, wear a 12.5).

Eventually I settled on an off-brand pair of dance sneakers - those weird-assed split sole jazz things that have zero arch support. They might be durable but they're also pretty uncomfortable and if I actually wore them out dancing I think I'd be too sore to walk the next morning. Not exactly what I had in mind when I put my money down.

So, for the time being I keep looking and I keep being disappointed. Who knows, maybe by the time I'm 70 DanceStore.com will decide that people's feet don't stop growing when their eight years old.