I have wide feet.  Do I mean the E width that most shoe retailers and shoe buyers (99.9% of us) consider “wide?”  oh no, Dear Reader.  Would that it were that easy.  I’m talking EEEE or even F.  the next time you’re in the mall, stop into a shoe shop and ask them what they have available in those lengths  if you’re lucky, they won’t call Security and have you evicted from the mall for being a loony.

Let’s assume you’re still in the mall.  You’ll see a stupefying array of men’s and women’s (I’m not sure how they plan to accommodate the ‘woke” crowd with its 72 “genders”  - they mean sexes).  But let’s limit our consideration to men’s and women’s shoes.  Let’s take a look at athletic shoes, 99% of which are offered in any width men want, as long as it’s D, and likewise for women as long as they’re C width.  The availability of unisex shoes is so tiny as to fail to deserve our scrutiny.  But one of the few positive outcomes of the Covid lock-down is that more of us are wearing casual or even athletic shoes to work.  And office morale has dropped in direct proportion among us guys who now see less feminine legs shaped by high heels, if you will pardon a bit of relentless sexism.

That’s why I work from home.

But back to our analysis of shoe sizes.  I’m betting that most of you, if you remove your shoes and socks, will notice that your feet are three-dimensional appendages.  But yet we normally have the same lack of options we’ve always had.  We buy shoes based on one dimension and hope for the nest.  We may compromise as I did for years.  We may buy a longer length in the hope that it will offer needed additional width.  But for most of my life I’ve been disappointed by that compromise.  I’ve flopped around like a clown in the circus with ridiculous lengths and still not achieving the right width.  And the similarity to circus performers is the least of the problems.  Tight fits make walking, let alone running or playing a sport, uncomfortable.  Probably the reason I was never invited to play in the NFL, NBA, NHL (skates are an even more restrictive dilemma) or the like.  That plus a total lack of skill, which is the subject of yet another essay.

Would we buy a shirt with an unknown collar size, based only on sleeve length?  I think not.  Ditto for a pair of pants with undisclosed waist size based only on the inseam?  Again, seriously doubtful.  But yet we hit the shoe stores that offer an important option-style-but treat the human foot as if it’s one-dimensional.  If those of us with nearly circular feet are lucky, we can find a wide (E) or extra wide (EE) or the female equivalent and are so uncomfortable in our shoes, we think we should qualify for a handicapped parking tag so we can limp into and around the mall.  By the way, the situation in big box/discount/club stores is even worse.  Style and length, length and style.  No matter how you look at it, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment.

And there are a plethora of online retailers, some of whom claim to accommodate high instep and wide feet.  I got lucky with an online source recently and acquired a pair of athletic shoes that seem to do both.  But it was pure dumb luck.  And even with said luck, I probably only acquired a slight increase in width.  There go those NBA dreams again.

I’m given to challenging shoe retailers verbally and online vendors in writing to pay more attention to parameters other than length and, of course, style.  I hope against all hope that they will pass the word up the food chain to the manufacturers.  Then again, I always send a big check to those Nigerian princes to help them free up millions in booty.  Looking like a million dollars while limping around is not a future I look forward to.  The solution?  I’m moving to Florida, where I’m told that flip-flops are all one needs.  Even so, I don’t even want to think about whether flip-flops are available in ridiculously wide, but my consideration of flip-flops is in its formative stages at best.  Maybe I’ll go barefoot.  Or stay on the recliner in the lanai.

There you have it, the very definition of ‘buying a pig in a poke,” whatever that means.  One positive aside:  sagacious retailers in the Chicago area purportedly stock a richer mix of wide and extra wide shoes, based on a belief that we Chicagoans are mainly a mix of German and Eastern European lineage.  And I have no idea if this is still the case; it’s old information.  And that still leaves the instep as the third and almost completely ignored dimension.

Alright, you can put our shoes and sock back on.  It’s hard to ignore the fact that feet are three-dimensional and used by most of us on a regular basis.  Unless you’re a shoe manufacturer.