Barefooting Day 8

Sunday September 19, 2010:

Barefooting down on the farm! Yee-Haw!
Okay, hopefully that didn't insult anyone, and if it did I am very sorry.

Boyfriend and I got invited by my aunt for a cookout down at her house Sunday, and free food always being nice we of course went. Now, here's the thing about my family- Many of them live out in the country, and I really want to when I get a bit older and it's financially convenient (I'm not much of a city person- Give me woods, some dogs, and a couple other animals any day). The best part of being out on the family farm though? The younger ones at least are almost always without shoes.

So sitting down by the river barefoot is me, 4 younger cousins of mine, and their mother. On the shoe side are my grandmother, my boyfriend, 2 male friends of my cousins, and my uncle. What made this day so nice though was that we eventually got 8 out of 10 people out of their shoes- Even my shoe obsessed boyfriend.

My grandmother is hard pressed to remove her shoes. At her age I figure she's allowed to not be harassed by me about shoes- I've told her many times it would likely help her knees but she'll hear none of it because she always ends up banging her toes on something (even inside the house). It actually makes me want to study what, if any, effects shoes have on the human foot's ability to give feedback (of course shoes cause us to loose sensory feedback as we can't feel the ground, but do they kill that completely over time?)

My uncles, being the working sort also find shoes necessary. Around cattle my first instinct is about how large the animals are and how that's a good idea, but later reflection has me disagreeing with myself. I'm not sure how all cows are, but ours are spooked by anything. Sure they'll follow you around, but as soon as you turn around and walk near them they scatter. I suppose we could go with the argument of their being things on the ground but most of the things one would step on can be washed off, and I've walked those woods since I was a child barefoot with little problem.

The 2 friends that were invited along I can't comment much on... They did however lose their shoes to jump into the creek, and left them off for some time after, but they both did put them back on before leaving.

My 4 cousins (3 girls and 1 boy) are all high school aged kids, and I know they all wear shoes generally (2 of them even have the girly shoe obsession), but we're relaxing around the farm no one sees a point. In and out of the creek, into the woods, across the soft grass, across the not so soft gravel... It doesn't really seem to matter. Everyone would be pulling them on and off to often for it to be convent in any case.

Boyfriend is who I'm really proud of though. After some pressure he was convinced to get into the creek with the rest of us,and slowly walked across the pebbles barefoot (the 3 girls very sadly grabbed shoes worried about glass, I would fall flat on my butt wearing flips on those slick rocks). He even kept them off as we dried off sitting on the ground, though pulled them back on before walking up stream in the grass.

The air was cool in the shade, the water was freezing (that didn't stop us from swimming of course), the ground was soft, and most everyone was barefoot. A good day indeed.