Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 15, 2021

Do you have any nonathletic shoes that you have worn in the past eight years?

Why spend money on replacing or adding to something you haven’t used in 6 or 8 years?

PS: In my observation, running shoes are generally only retired when the sole is no longer useful.

“Why are you so interested, little girl?”

He’d better throw out the ones from 6-8 years ago. He’s doing his feet no favours, wearing shoes that old. The inner soles wear out & don’t support your foot correctly any more & you end up causing trouble to your feet. And he doesn’t want foot trouble, unless he wants to have to quit running.

I’ve lost a couple of pairs of shoes in the last two years to old age. Not wear or tear, just the ravages of time on poorly-made products.

The first was a pair of dress shoes that I was wearing for the first time in a few years. Walking to work, they felt a bit ill-fitting, but I thought little of it. Walking home for lunch, they started to feel truly weird, and then after another block my foot fell out. The shoe was still snug around my ankle, but the sole had come free of the toe of the shoe. I was able to get another block before needing to remove the shoe entirely as I simply could not keep my foot in it. When I got home, only a portion of the heel was still attached to the rest of the shoe, and after removing the other shoe I saw that it was about to suffer the same fate.

The second malfunction happened a couple of weeks ago, to a pair of running shoes. The foam that composed most of the heel disintegrated and disappeared entirely, leaving nothing but air between the rubber sole and the millimeter-thick fabric of the shoe. Fortunately I was only half a mile or so from home when the shoe failed, so it was only moderately awkward and uncomfortable.

It had been so long since my FIL wore his dress shoes, that when he wore them to a recent wedding, the soles crumbled all over the dance venue floor. He’s not a dancer, fortunately, so he mostly just stayed in one place and threw them out when he got home.

Apparently she has already grown through the shoes her parents bought her when school started a few weeks ago. Happens a lot in the growing years.

My foot sizes haven’t changed. They still look like water lily pads. But I think that shoe companies have decided to gradually downsize their sizes.

Actually, I think that over recent decades there has been a general reduction in the fit and finish of many products, clothing and shoes being just one category. It is hard for me to accept that our major once reliable manufacturers just let their foreign subsidiaries adjust the specs of material and sizing to suit themselves and then pass the resulting almost fit on to consumers.

My ancient W-2’s show time on the sales floor at several major clothing and haberdashery chains. Shirts came in exact collars and sleeve length, trousers in waist and length, dress shoes in known widths and lengths and actual leather. Now it’s either a 2-size range or s,m.l,xl, which is only a best guess at accurate sizing. But then furniture was actual natural woods and showed various pleasing styles. And houses were not limited in style to left-side garage or right-side garage.

Add to that the reduced population of actual craftsmen in all those trades, and it seems to me we haven’t gained as much as we have lost.

But that’s just the perspective of one who has experienced many of the changes in the past 8 decades. Many will disagree, but I don’t mind. I’m good with it.

There’s certainly clothing I haven’t worn in more than a year, but for a different reason.

Foot sizes Do change! Get your feet re-sized every few years, or suffer (and I Do mean suffer) the consequences!

I have a pair of Docksiders that I still wear that are pushing 40.

You can’t assume that your shoe size hasn’t changed. And if you have shoes you haven’t worn for years, you can throw them away. They’ve hardened over the years and will fall apart if you try to put them on.