I was hoping you would not be upset with my trashing of high heels. There are so many different kinds of human feet. My daughter, BTW, inherited my nose but her mother's feet. They are identical and she also refuses to wear heels because they are so painful for her, too. My feet are very different. I have extraordinarily high arches which presents its own set of problems.

I have never asked anyone to remove their shoes before coming into my home. That is how my daughter was raised. But then she got married to a man whose family lived according to that custom so she adopted it. Though knowing about my knee injury she refuses to provide a chair for me to sit on in order to take off my shoes. I always have to get down on the floor to take off or put on my shoes at which point their dog attacks me with love. That makes it all better although there is nothing for me to grab onto to pull myself up off the floor.

Now that I live so much closer to my daughter and granddaughters I am going to start wearing flip-flops when I go over there as soon as the weather gets warmer. One of the things I love best about flip-flops is that they are so easy to put on or take off. No chair required.

Have you ever played flip-flop basketball? My daughter and I played that when she was a little kid. I had a wicker basket that I set up on a table. We would then sit in a chair and kick our foot, releasing the flip-flop into the air in hopes of the flip-flop landing in the basket. Tons of fun!

I really miss that pair of boots that I mentioned having a few decades ago. They had a bit of a heel but that didn't bother me at all. One of the things I liked about them is that there were no shoestrings to be tied. I could put them on or take them off without a chair.

Something I failed to mention in my story is the extreme importance of footwear to those humans who wait tables. Back when we were opening and building our business, my then-wife waited tables for a few years. She was always thoroughly exhausted when she came home from an 8-hour shift of waitressing. Even though she wore comfy Birkenstocks her dogs were always barking. I rubbed her feet countless times.

I never truly appreciated what she went through until a few years after our divorce when I found myself waiting tables. I was in my fifties, a former self-employed prominent businessman who was now waiting freaking tables. I felt like I had hit rock bottom. And we all know where rock bottom is. It is directly under our feet!

Although my beloved wolf-dog would lick them, I had no one to massage my feet. That is when I discovered the wonders of epsom salt. I finally understood and appreciated what my ex-wife had gone through and I called her to profusely thank her for what she had done. I could finally relate.

Luckily, after just four months of waiting tables I was fired. My dogs no longer barked. They howled with joy.

Now that I am "retired" I do a heck of a lot of walking. But I also spend way the heck too many hours seated in my comfy ergonomic desk chair in front of my computer. I have two rules. When I write I am ALWAYS barefoot. And when I meditate I am ALWAYS barefoot.

Feet really are like dogs. How you treat them is how they treat you back.