Learning to Walk In Heels

It has been many long years since I had to worry about walking on high heels.

I'd say I threw my last pair out nearly 20 years ago - probably about the same time I jumped the "what-the-hell" shark and tied a scarf under my chin, Old World babushka style,  during a really windy storm.

I have plenty of shoes that aren't flat-flats, but nothing that resembles the "spikes" I occasionally wore at various time in my life.

My shoes are - there's no other way to describe them - sensible. They vary on the comfy-continuum from walking-on-air to wouldn't-want-to-hike-10 miles-but-otherwise-okay. They also vary on the style-continuum, but very few are out-and-out clunky.

I was amused the other day to see a small bit on the news (while I was in NYC) on a woman who teaches women to walk in stiletto heels.

Yes, I know they look sexy - especially when worn by a sexy, young thing - but if you need to have a lesson on how to walk in a shoe, it's probably a shoe that - from a podiatric health point of view - you shouldn't be walking in.

Walking in shoes.

Aren't shoe-walking lessons kind of like those old Cool Whip ads in which those wide-eyed folks asked Sarah how she made "pudding in a cloud."

What kind of a moron couldn't figure out that it was instant pudding with a plop of Cool Whip thrown on top?

And those instructions on shampoo - lather, rinse, repeat - with the repeat obviously thrown in to sell more shampoo. (Honestly, does anyone actually repeat?)

Lessons in shoe walking.

I suppose if you spend a hundred bucks per inch for a pair of 6-inch Manolo Blahnik's, you'd be willing to pay for lessons to walk in them. (On second thought, shouldn't the lessons be thrown in for free?)

But, again, if you need lessons the shoes are probably terrible for your feet, your calf muscles, your back, etc.

Those heels!

Girlfriends, you're risking a broken ankle. You're risking getting caught in the bricks. Or in a grate. You're risking breaking a heel off, and then having to limp along like Granpappy Amos in the old Real McCoys.

I see plenty of young women in downtown Boston with these terrible shoes on. They look like they're in agony. That's because they are.

A lesson might be able to teach you how to walk without teetering over and falling on your prettily made-up face. But ain't no lesson going to make those puppies feel like anything but the torture-chambers-for-your-feet that they are.

Sometimes I see women my age in these spikey heels.

By now, you'd think they'd have grown out of them, given up the fight, and settled into a pair of clunky old, comfy Hush Puppies.