On Feet, Fred Flintstone & a Dirty Little Secret

(Not about Fred, who remains pure.)

Confession: I have Fred Flintstone feet. Short. Wide. Tree stumps in socks. I hike a lot but I can’t blame the shape of my feet on hiking. Though I do I have a short cousin who blames his diminished stature on the many parachute landings he made during his military career as a combat surgeon. But hiking is not that heroic so I’ll just have to blame genetics. I come from a family of short people (like my cousin.) Well, not exactly short, just not tall. My thinking is that my Fred Flintstone feet came from my not tall genes. So maybe it was genetics that gave me short  - but apparently not narrow – feet. In short: Fred Flintstone feet. 

My mother, who had small feet, always claimed one of her feet was larger than the other. Countless shoe-store sales clerks politely told her that was impossible while quietly branding her as a whack job. To prove her feet were identical, they would measure each with the venerable (and unassailably accurate) Apex Foot Measuring System - # 1131A. The results were assured to be identical with the clerk deftly moving the sizing slider bar as they lifted it to her for inspection. “See – identical!”  They would then sell her a pair of shoes – one of which was inevitably either too large or too small. Years later my mom learned it’s absolutely possible to have two feet of different sizes. You can look it up on the Internet, where everything is true. 

On the subjects of Internet, shoe sales and foot size, here’s the dirty secret that shoe stores don’t want you to know. They don’t stock all sizes. This was especially true years ago when shoe stores were neither online nor warehouse size. They stocked only the most popular sizes and had clerks to jam everyone else’s feet into whatever size was in stock. 

I learned this from an executive with Florsheim (the shoe company) out of Chicago. He measured me and said I was an 8 extra wide, also known as 8 EEE. 

I believe this to be true because my closet at the time was filled with what looked more like the snouts of adult crocodiles than a collection of 8 extra-wide (EEE) footwear. The shoe store (not Florsheim’s) didn’t stock triple-E’s and had been sticking me into longer boots to get the extra width. Because I was young, foolish and believed that shoe store sales clerks were omnipotent in their knowledge of feet, shoes and orthotics, I bought into the mania. I’ve since seen NBA players with smaller shoes.