I had very little clothes with me when I went to Canada from New York. So my mom bought me this lovely dress that would be highly appropriate for the event I was attending and for work. I was very excited. We went out for some lunch (and the food court at the mall had such marvelous options), but quickly realized that I had no shoes.
Now I don’t know if it’s apparent in my posts about the Vibram FiveFingers or the pictures of my puppy by my feet, but I wear a women’s size twelve shoe. I can sometimes squeeze into a size 11, but more often than not a few minutes of walking in those shoes leaves me near tears in pain.
Size 12 shoes are not easy to find. Most stores barely carry size 11. If they have the shoe in size 10 it’s the only pair they have received. I end up having to do most of my shoe shopping on the internet (eg. Zappos) or I spend a great deal of time in my men’s sized running shoes. It’s actually a very good thing I like colours like blue.
I have the biggest shoes in my immediate family. This includes my in-laws, people of tiny feet. My father in-law wears a men’s 7 I think. That’s almost men’s kid sizes. Friends used to laugh that they could use my flip flops as snowshoes. I outgrew my dad’s hockey skates as a kid. When we rowed they sometimes had to replace the shoes in my seat with larger ones because I was uncomfortable. My shoe size has inconvenienced many people other than me.
And I’m only 5′7″ (and a quarter), so people sometimes don’t believe me when I tell them my giant feet dilemmas.
We did visit a store that advertised they carried shoes up to a women’s size 14, but the only pair that suited my needs was $500. My mom offered to buy them (I think she feels bad that somewhere along the way a faulty foot gene was passed my way), but I couldn’t justify spending that much money on a single pair. I always try to spend money carefully, even if it’s not my own.
So I ended up with a pair of flip-flops from Payless. Luckily my Grandmother’s funeral was only her children, their spouses, her grandchildren and some of her grandchildren’s significant others so everyone there was family and no one was looking at my shoes. But the mad dash around a dozen different shoe stores was beyond frustrating and without a really satisfying result.
Mind you, I may have giant feet, but no one has ever met me and immediately commented on how frighteningly huge my feet are.
