Then, now, or both. The mind of a barefooter.

I definitely grew up wearing shoes. I do recall going to a second cousin's birthday paty one year in a pair of flip flops (as a 4-5 year old) and not being able to run around as well as the kids in sneakers. I eventually doffed the shoes, but remained somewhat embarrassed by my bare feet.
I came to barefooting in public on a regular basis relatively late in life (during medical school). I had always (again since age 4 or 5) been intrigued with the idea of people being barefoot in public and thought I'd give it a try.
To this day, I remain a pretty casual barefooter. I certainly go barefoot more than most of the population, but I refuse to go barefoot during cold weather when I might be mistaken as a psychiatric patient or some such. Likewise, my job doesn't really lend itself to barefooting (I'm a surgery resident).
Sorry if I have rambled too much; that's what beer does to me.
Chad

 

People within my community know and love me and that's all that really counts. I'm beginning to realize how valuable that is, and I'm actually about to give up a six-digit salary just to move back to my pals where I'll have no job and no house. But I'd rather be unemployed and homeless than live in a place where people give me bad looks just for going barefoot. That kind of social persecution is not worth all the money in the world. I won't compromise. I won't put on my shoes for them. But I will leave them and their stinkin rules and expectations. Some other fool can have my "prestigious" job. I'm going from corporate executive to barefoot farmhand and that's just fine by me.

 

Sweet Dream,
That's pretty brave of you to leave so much money and security behind to do something that you'll really enjoy. I don't have the courage to do the same; plus, I really enjoy operating too much to give up surgery. It's the most fun I can have with my shoes on. Out of curiosity, what kind of farm work will you be doing?
Chad

 

Hey Chad, mostly I was invited to live on my friend's farm rent-free, since giving up my job will leave me homeless and unemployed. Back in the mid 1990s I left a good job in the town I loved (they even let me go barefoot there) and was eventually forced into the city. Since then, my life has been kind of a mess, full of regrets. For instance, real estate prices have skyrocketed since I left that job, and if I had just kept it and bought a home, I'd have a place for all my stuff (and I have an entire collection of antique radios, tools, hobbies, and art that I don't want to loose) and would have that house paid off or subsidized by other investments by now. But I didn't do that and paused my income during the worst possible time period. So now I'm broke, mostly from flying back and forth every weekend and spending every dollar of that six digit salary on hotels, rental cars, and airfare just to visit friends in a small agricultural town. It seems that the only way to return to that town is to give up my job here in the city, and take up my friend's offer and put all my stuff into some kind of low-cost storage. I'm already considering spending the last of my savings on a trailer, a cargo container, and a bunch of tarps. No chance at getting my old job back- I gave it to someone else who loves it now as much as I did. My peers have all bought homes and have families now, but I somehow took a different path and have been all over the place just trying to get back to where I was before. But that can't really happen so I'm just going to live on the farm and give up on my career and give up on having a home again, at least for a while. My friend told me that I'd have to help on the farm, so I'll probably use some of my skills and design solar power systems and other high tech projects (I currently manage 100-million dollar engineering contracts), but will probably be cleaning out the chicken coop and stuff like that. Who knows what might happen next but I just can't sit here and waste my life anymore in a place where I don't feel I belong. I just want to be with my pals and away from this city already and can't wait. At least I'll be playing more music, getting more exercise, and won't feel so alienated anymore. Perhaps I could work as an independent engineering contractor on the side, when I'm not shoveling chicken shit and picking fleas out of my skin. Consider yourself lucky that you're happy with your situation and don't let distractions lure you away like they did for me. Needless to say, I'm not totally happy about the compromise but it's the lesser of two evils at least for me.

 

sweet dream, you may have already mentioned it, and if so I apologize for missing it, but where is this small town you're moving to? And what's the city you're currently living in? It's always nice to know what parts of our country are barefoot friendly and what parts are not.

 

Davis, CA verses Los Angeles (aka Hell-A)

 

i can remember being about 6 years old and my grandma grabbing my arm as i walked into the house .. "you little devil! went outside without your shoes on! how many times has your mother and me told you to put on some shoes?!!?"

 

My story is just about the same, except I "discovered" barefooters via the Dirty Sole Society -- which I was denied entry to because of my avowed foot fetish, which is a big no-no with its founder. Well, the Society for Barefoot Living sprang up after that and I am a member of that instead.

Part of having my foot fetish meant that I was acutely aware of feet -- others' and my own. I was therefore very self-conscious of having my feet seen by others, so I mostly wore shoes. Heh, I was not some sort of freak who wore socks in a swimming pool or anything, though. I remember once or twice driving barefoot as a teenager, thinking I was "getting away with something wrong," and the same when I would once or twice during the summer go into a deli or something barefoot to get a sandwich.

I am very glad for having discovered, through the research of others, that there is nothing either wrong OR illegal about being barefoot in public. I do it all the time, now. ALL the time. And I wear closed shoes only about a half-dozen times during any given year. If I am not barefoot, I'm usually wearing nothing more shoe-like than flip-flops.


-Jeffrey

 

The founder of DSS posts here from time to time, I won't give the name, but the reason for the fetish ban is that the DSS was/is a family oriented site and they had to create a set of guide lines to keep it that way. I know you won't agree with the ban on fetishes, but it was to "keep the kids safe" from predators that might happen on to the site. The site policed itself.

 

A lot of people here have mentioned the "shyness" about going barefoot in public. This is a big topic for me. I go barefoot every summer, but I always have to work up enough nerve to do it. It's like, I'll wear my flip-flops somewhere, planning to take them off, but about 50% of the time, I chicken out and hate myself for it later.
When I do go barefoot, it's hard to look nonchalant about it. It's not the kind of thing you can fake--if you're not really comfortable, you probably won't look comfortable.
One thing to keep in mind, I guess, is that the world doesn't stop if you get some funny looks for being barefoot in a public place, and probably nobody will even remember it later!

Mark

 

Interesting stuff about surgeons/OR staff leaving work in barefeet. I actually did that once as an intern. A patient died undergonig a liver transplant that I was observing/assisting with, bled out all over the only shoes that I had with me that day; of course, he had hepatitis C, and I felt that the safe thing to do for me, my live-in girlfriend, and her pets, was to ditch the shoes. I left the hospital barefoot that day.

I love my job and would never contemplate quitting, but I do look forward to the day when I have more control over my schedule (and can take more vacations to warmer locales) and my residence; I see myself being barefoot a lot more in the future.

Chad

 

ive always gone bare foot as a child and still do as a teenager but never at school,i think wed be kicked out/sent home.

 

I still barefoot as much as I can. Though the winters here are fairly frigid... so... I don't barefoot as much as I would like to as of late. However, I also don't go outdoors much in the winter either I'm not a fan of the cold... I reckon I need to move somewhere warm.

Anyway, anytime there isn't snow on the ground I'm barefooting

Oh and to answer the question, I've been a barefooter since I was a kid. My parents had to fight with me to wear shoes or socks

 

Looking nonchalant just comes with experience. It helps a lot if you never look down at your feet, and try to just forget the fact that you're barefoot. Just keep your eyes focused generally at eye-level, and if someone appears to be looking toward you in an odd way just look at them in the eye and smile. They'll either quickly avert their eyes, or seeing that you're friendly and "normal" they'll probably smile back and then go about their business. But basically, don't even think about your possibly looking any different from anyone else. Attitude and demeanor are very important to barefoot acceptance.

You got that right!

 

You are a real cutie Apples!

I like the pics of your tootsies!