Everyone is debating whether pee is sterile or not...seriously? I wouldn't care if it was Jesus' piss...I ain't steppin' in it, and in my opinion (to the people who thing pee is sterile) - you shouldn't walk around in piss-that just makes you a filthy slob-even if it is infact "sterile" to you.
You beat me to it, Matthew! Thanks for posting that! Ahhh, now we're coming back on topic. "Filthy slob" is an entirely subjective quality. There are also those judegmental enough to think that a male wearing long hair, or anyone wearing a tie-died t-shirt qualifies them as a "filthy slob". Others are more open-minded. None of us likes walking into a dirty restroom, shod or not, but I'd go to the extent to say the following: That anyone who encases their feet in shoes, ignoring their maintenance and rendering them smelly and fungus infested is a "filthy slob". The shod individual who walks through a filthy restroom and then walks with those same shoes into a house/business/office without washing them is much more of a "filthy slob" than a barefooter who is exquisitely aware of the state of their feet and where they walk at all times. Shoddies whose minds are so filled with prejudice and superstition that they would deny us the joys of experiencing the world barefoot and who label us "filthy slobs" stand revealed as the true "filthy slobs". Of course, this would not apply to anyone hip enough to post on this great forum
I think feet must be more resistant to infection than people think. I have often walked across farmland covered in sheep/cattle faeces (i try to avoid stepping in them!) as well as public toilets, never caught anything (i'm touching wood as i type this!). I once suffered a cut deep enough to bleed on some jagged metal, and had to walk two miles across country on it as i don't take shoes with me. It healed very quickly and, to my surprise, without leaving a scar.
which happens rarely to barefooters because they're way more aware of their surroundings and where they step
back on topic, i have walked in public toilets barefoot. i have to problem stepping in urine. you can always wash your feet when you return home. to me as another poster stated, as a barefooter you have to take the good with the bad.
Well Since I Have Long Suffered From "Foot In Mouth Syndrome" This Could Turn Out To Be A Serious Health Issue For Me....Cheers Glen.
haw. lol after a long time i was forced to take a trip to the usual italian restroom flooded with you know what. now, left behind the fact that most people cant stand such a thing, i must say that those places happen to be this filthy because of this overwhelming mass of careless shoddies around. i bet they'd think twice before shooting out of target if they were barefoot too and were likely to enter again there. btw the owners of the club are friends of mine, and the lady - which is massively overweight and has to stand all night long - when sees me coming in barefoot is encouraged to discard shoes herself ...
I just wonder how people think mankind have survived if going barefoot were so dangerous as some believe. Not so long ago a large part of the population were farmers, in warmer months people in general and children in specific went barefoot everywhere. They stepped of course in all kinds of stuff. Wouldn´t the humans died out then? How many cases of people getting sick of stepping in urine could we actually find? I seems like for some, may be if they start later in life, becoming a barefooter are getting your feet used to being barefoot just as much as getting your mind used to it. People are not born with a fear of toilet floors, some people learn from other when they grew up. No one told me to worry when I was a kid so I went barefoot to public toilets when I had to. Think about when you are a barefoot boy and you are playing outdoors away from your home and you have to "water a tree" it will sometimes splash on you feet and if standing down hill you may step in it. That was the case for all barefoot kids and I have never heard about anybody getting sick. So I can´t say I think much about it. We like going barefoot. If we have to go to the toilet, we go barefoot. If we want barefooting to appear as the natural and most easy choise as it is, we should not make it difficult by carry around shoes and put on in case of we have to visit the toilet. I belive other people would find it weird and doubt that barefooting were a good idea.
By the way how did this discussion turn from public toilets to drinking urine? That´s another question. I think I don´t want to try that. I remember some years ago there were a discussion about public toilets and stepping in things in general among some Danish barefooters. I wrote something like: When we go barefoot regularly, within some time our soles get so tough we could go barefoot over gravel and broken glass without any harm, so how dangerous do you think things on the floor could be? At first it has to come in to the body. It´s not enough with a minor cut. It has to be deep and if that would happen I think we would wash the injury well. The bacterias are not spreading that fast as we belive, besides tropical areas, wich Scandinavia are not a part of, it quite enough to wash your feet when you come home. And we have a immune defense system in the body that makes it hard for the bacterias to survive.
Exactly! It doesn't matter how filthy a place is; our skin is made to keep pathogens out. Except for on the *very* rare occasions I have a minor break in the skin (I get a splinter or thorn only very rarely, even though I barefoot everywhere), I trust my skin to do its job, so I don't worry about restrooms, barns or any other places I walk. I don't lick my feet, I don't put them up on the table, and I wash them when I get home. Until then, I trust any germs to sit on the outside of my skin where they belong (as opposed to entering my body). It's our hands we should worry about, even in restrooms and such; sure we wash them but there's also the doorknobs etc... if we were to put on footwear for going into such places and took it off afterwards we'd actually be HANDling the potentially infectuous dirt MORE! And with our hands we're more likely to transfer it to face & food where these germs *can* enter our body... Btw, the one or two times I remember when I had just had a tiny splinter & had to go, I just stepped on my toe/heel (opposite of where the splinter was) for those few steps inside the restroom, rather than putting something on. Wouldn't work for a long walk through a pasture but easy enough for the few steps & brief time you have to be in the restroom. The hookworm is one of the few things that can enter through the skin but it hasn't been a problem in the South since modern plumbing has replaced the outhouses and never was much of a problem in cooler climates.
