A colleague from work walked with me yesterday to a meeting in a building about a half-mile away. The weather was warm, humid, and sunny.
My colleague was complaining about the heat and wearing a shirt & tie (like I was) and feeling sweaty. Then he looked at my feet, saw my boots and asked,
“you even wear boots in summer? Don’t they get hot? Don’t your feet hurt?”
I looked at his sad, tired, dress shoes and could have said the same thing. But instead, I answered his questions directly.
“Yes, I wear boots in the summer and all year through. No, my boots don’t get hot if they fit right. Just like what appears to be a painful fit with those dress shoes you are wearing, if the fit is right, the comfort is there. If they don’t fit right, then you’ll scrunch up your face in pain like you’re doing.”
My colleague looked at me, then my boots, then his shoes, and then gave a little chuckle when he replied, “you’re right. These shoes suck! Where could I find a pair of cool boots like you have?”
I didn’t tell him that he has to marry someone like my spouse who loves me and buys me really nice boots. Instead, I explained more about how to find good boots on-line since we do not have any decent stores that sell boots within 20 miles of the town in which we work. But first, I encouraged him to get his feet measured because he is probably like so many other guys who say to themselves, “I wear a size 10D” because they believe that once they reach adulthood, their foot measurement does not change. Not true.
After our meeting, my colleague and I walked back to our building. I broached the subject, “so what do you wear when you mow the lawn?” His reply, so typical, was “shorts and sneakers! Don’t tell me that you wear boots to mow the lawn!”
My reply: “yes, they’re called work boots. And long pants, too. I don’t want to risk injury.” I could see the wheels spinning in my colleague’s head. Then he changed the subject and we talked about other stuff. But I continued to watch him look at my boots on the way back to the office.
Life is short: wear boots!