Hi! I'm a college kid from Central Europe who just recently discovered this forum. Walking barefoot has been a quirk of mine for a while now, but I've only now found enough courage to proudly say that I simply adore being barefoot! My feet never felt quite at ease in bulky shoes, so for years I almost exclusively wore sandals (with an occasional pair of socks), in part because they would let me bare my feet with ease (and freely wiggle my toes). I'm hoping that one day I'll ditch shoes altogether and walk barefoot everywhere. Though I'm still a bit foot shy, I try to cherish every opportunity to go barefoot in the great outdoors. There's simply no substitute for the childish, primal feeling of gooey mud squelching under bare soles and squeezing between naked toes! Anyhow, here's a big, warm hug from Barefoot Scout - and happy, muddy trails to all fellow barefooters!
welcome ! first thing i did when lockdown was partially lifted, i went to the fields just to feel some mud between my toes.. And i annoyed snakes in the moats and roe deer in high grass. So you're not alone
I live in the countryside, so I know exactly how good that feels! Unfortunately, it hasn't rained here in weeks so the fields are bone dry. Here's hoping for some summer showers so my feet can go mudding again!
Funny, because I sometimes think I should have started going barefoot when I was even younger! I spent much of my childhood wearing shoes that I've since came to hate, and I wonder how nice it would have been if I had a proper barefoot childhood. Alas, I wasn't provided such a privilege, so now I have some catching up to do!
Yea, I agree. Kind of depresses me because I had some golden opportunities to go barefoot as a kid, even while at school.I refocus and get back to the present.
It's always nice to reminisce about those opportunities and fantasize how nice it would've been if some things went a bit differently. I too had a few missed chances, but I was a very shy kid, especially so when it came to showing my naked feet in a public place. At my school we had to take off our outdoor shoes and put on school slippers, as to not damage the wooden floors or drag too much dirt in. The "cool" kids all wore Converse or some other sneakers, while the remaining few of us mostly wore plain, black plimsolls as our school slippers. In later years of elementary school I found enough courage to wear a pair of slide sandals as my school slippers (which was quite a goofy thing to do - I was pretty much the only boy in my school who didn't mind wearing open-toe shoes) but I always had a pair of socks on as well! It would have been so easy to take those sandals and socks off at just about any time - but no, young Barefoot Scout was a good, nerdy kid who did everything "by the book" and was afraid he might get in trouble if a teacher caught him not wearing his slippers!
Buddy, I know your pain. I didn't become properly barefoot until I was 27. Before that, I was held back by childhood fears that proved to be unfounded. All that lost time and opportunities are among my biggest regrets in life. Try as you might, you can never fully take it back.
Amen to that! I wonder what was responsible for putting all of those fears inside our heads when we were very young. It seems to concentrated among the male gender from my observations. I'm so delighted to hear so many here carried those feelings around, it gives me relief that I wasn't the only kid with these thoughts. Always felt I was crazy.......
Heard that stuff when I was a kid, too. "If you go barefooted, people will think we can't afford shoes." "Church people won't approve of that." "Only hippies go barefooted." And so on. All BS.
And to think that most kids, especially boys, were expected to be barefoot back in the old days. Mark Twain wrote that "a boy who didn't go barefooted, or wore shoes when it was not absolutely necessary, was viewed as a "Miss Nelly". The unfortunate lad being an object of complete derision among my companions." Today, the complete opposite is the norm. Hopefully when I have kids society will be more accepting of bare feet, and they'll learn that being barefoot is nothing to be ashamed of!
I'm aware of at least one girl from my youth, who once very clearly stated that "It's disgusting to be barefoot". But generally speaking, yeah, girls in my area seemed to be much cooler with not using footwear during the hotter summer days. As for me, I was not comfortable with exposing any parts of my body in public, because I was worried about the possible negative repercussions that might follow. Ridicule, criticism... what have you. You know, kids in particular can be little shits with the way they act, and I didn't wanna suffer trough the possible embarrassment. My parents also made the ridiculous mistake of trying to pressure me into taking them off, which just made me close up even more. I was not at all okay with all the petty attention that this matter was bringing upon me, with others trying to dictate to me what should I wear when it wasn't their fucking business, and completely disregarding my own wishes in the matter, so I resisted to make it clear that I will not be controlled. The end result of this gross mismanagement of my situation of course was that I missed my barefoot childhood. Couldn't do it, because of all the unwanted attention the issue was drawing. Nobody else was ever pestered about their feet this much, why were mine all of a sudden such a big fucking deal?
I don’t remember any of the boys in my neighborhood wearing shoes in the summer except to go to church. We were free. Most of the time we were running all over town and our parents didn’t worry about us. Back in those days nobody bothered a kid. He just got in fights with kids from other neighborhoods. As you can see, I forgot the joys of barefooting when the culture changed. Barefooting was for kids, and shoes were for adults. Fun was for kids and work was for adults.
They attempted to give me direct orders to take my shoes off in situations, where I didn't want to, then shamed me when I didn't play by their rules, because exposing myself didn't feel good at the time. The whole thing often felt very awkward. When I was very young, they even tried to confiscate my socks at one point, during a summer in the 80's. My best memory is from around 1986-87. So maybe they were right in the end, but the point is that they tried to use the emotionally very harmful shaming tactics to force me into blind obedience, with no regard to my own wishes in the matter. They went about it the wrong way. Mom in particular has always been the very controlling type, and to this day she often refuses to acknowledge, how counterproductive that type of behavior can be. It's always her way or the highway, her ideals, her wishes, and many a fight once broke out because she wouldn't compromise. May not seem like a big deal to you, just comply and it'll be over, right? But you must try to understand what it all looked and felt like to a small, physically inferior minor, who was also later discovered to be an Asperger to boot. There was an effort to make my own opinions and wishes in the matter completely meaningless, my right to choose was being robbed from me, just to placate somebody else's wishes. My voice wasn't being heard. So I resisted to make a point. I am consequentially very much pro choice myself today. As an adult, after I became responsible for my own choices, I finally decided to open up of my own free will, and give barefooting a try, which brings us to today. But I would never pester others about their clothing choices, nor try to push my own ideals or agenda, because other people's duds aren't my business and to claim so would be rude. You could come to me wearing a full gimp suit, and I probably wouldn't tell you to take it off, just because I might feel that you look ridiculous in it. So, if you're a parent of a child, for fuck's sake, let the kid make up his/hers own damn mind. If yours is one of them sensitive individuals, your efforts to butt in could just make things worse.
I'm sorry to hear about the torment you went through, while I'm not a parent, they think they know what's best to reform your behavior and thoughts. As it turns out, it can create more harm than good. Through all the torture we endured in our adolescent years often brings that metamorphic change that greets us in due time.
