On Sunday we got up reasonably early to finish cleaning the house, and then went for brunch with Randy and Laura before heading to a local park for the Power of the Pumps walk. This was a fund-raising walk for a local charity specifically focused on helping women, so all of the men were supposed to walk the mile long course in women's shoes.
Doc was on a team with three other professors from his department and one guset walker; hence the name - Team Philosophy and Religion. I was particularly impressed to note that theirs was the only team to fulfill the shoe requirement according to the spirit of the thing, and they all actually wore women's shoes; they didn't wimp out by stringing a pair of heels on a ribbon and wearing them around their necks or by spray-painting a pair of old trainers hot pink. Doc C had the advantage of being married to a woman with the same size feet as him, so I was able to lend him my lovely blue-and-white striped wedges (I love this photo, but the grass means you can't really appreciate the height of the wedges. They're about 2 inches high). And I painted his toenails red to add just a touch more glamour.
The other team's all covered the course much faster, but it wasn't supposed to be a race, so I was very glad when the event organisers gave Team Philosophy and Religion an honourable mention. To top that Team P&R won the bronze for fund raising, and had both the winner of the highest heel (Jack) and prettiest shoes (Kern). Doc came in a close second on both of those categories, and also got a bronze for individual fund-raising. Doc was beaten on the technicality of his wearing a wedge, whereas Jack was wearing an actual heel, so Doc's were higher but were deemed easier to walk in; as for the prettiest shoes, well, I think that was because Kern had done his own nail varnish and so his salmon pink open-toe shoes had camoflaged toenails peeping out. The nail-varnish on both of them went down particularly well with some of the smaller spectators who ran ahead of them yelling "All Hail!" for the nail-varnish men!
The whole event was in the afternoon, and so Doc was probably wearing and walking in the wedges for two hours at the most. His legs were still aching when we went to bed, and when we got up this morning he was asking what he could do the make his Achilles tendon feel better. This did cause me to laugh and laugh and laugh, but I haven't teased him too much, because, to be fair, I barely ever wear heels myself.
I'd been careful to lend him the shoes least likely to also give him blisters or take all the skin off his heels, but I agree with him that heels do indeed suck to walk in, make your calves burn and throw you off your natural centre of balance. That's why I am so very proud of him (and his team mates) for actually doing the thing properly.
A mile in HER shoes indeed.
Recent Comments