Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your shoes!

Imeldamated
Continued

Big Foot Revealed
I also asked respondents for their shoe size and found a number of fellow size 10s and a couple of size 11s. In fact, the most frequent size reported was 9, closely followed by 8 ½. So maybe big flippers aren't so freakish after all.

So why do we own so many shoes? One reason might relate to the length of time we own them. More than 30% of respondents said they held on to their shoes as long as humanly possible, using such colorful language as, “until the bitter end,” “until I'm dragging the sole down the street by a thread,” and “when they've been subjected to such abuse that I can't fix them with Krazy Glue or Sharpies anymore.” I once held onto a dilapidated pair of pumps for ages thinking, “someday I'll just cut the heels off and use them when I grout the bathroom tiles again.”

At the same time as we hoard our shoes, we are always running up against occasions that force us to buy a certain kind of shoe. Maybe we decide to take up cattle wrangling only to give it up a week later when a calf poops on our Stetsons. Or maybe we were in a wedding once and were required to have our shoes dyed lime green to match our bridesmaids dress. What becomes of these castoffs? We keep them in some lonely corner of the closet, under a pile of I'll-wear-them-again-sometimes and but-I-paid-so-much-for-thems.

Of course, another perfectly logical explanation is that some women just really love shoes. They can't resist having those strappy sandals that match they favorite cocktail dress perfectly. Never mind that they never wear the cocktail dress either; it's just great to know they could! Of course, I think these women are crazy. But I'm here to learn, not judge.