Let the other shoe drop

“Those must be comfortable shoes.”

That’s an oft-quoted line -- one of many -- from the 1994 movie “Forrest Gump,” about a man with a below-average IQ and an above-average heart who somehow finds himself at the center of the 20th century’s most significant historical moments. He offers this observation to a woman sitting next to him on a park bench, and it serves as a launchpad for a series of flashbacks: Forrest running, Forrest leaping, Forrest running some more. He’d know a thing or two about comfortable shoes. He needs them. Without them, his feet would be unusable slabs of flesh, much like Pauly Shore and half of Congress.

I can relate. I need comfortable shoes, too.

Yet they’re so hard to find, and it’s such an important process. Choosing new shoes is like choosing new feet; pick wisely and it’s like walking on the lightest of vapors, your tootsies fortified against the harshness of glass-littered sidewalks and crumbly cow poop. Pick poorly and it’s a special brand of torture, in a league with the dreaded purple nurple. (Protip: Do not do a Google Image search for purple nurple.)

Playing it safe is never a bad option, and it’s been my modus operandi for the past several years. I plow through a pair of shoes in about 10 months, and every 10 months I walk into the same shoe store in the same town, plop my size 12-and-a-half on the same time-worn bench, and say to the same clerk, “Give me more of the same.” Generally this works. My particular model will occasionally cede ground to the latest and greatest upgraded pair, and it’s usually fine, but for the most part I’m able to walk out with fresh clones of whatever I brought with me. Good thing, too, because there’s nothing like trying on 30 pairs to make a person feel like walking into traffic while chewing on a cyanide tablet.

One of the first things you notice when you walk into a shoe store is the absurdly large selection. Two hundred years ago there were three styles to choose from: wooden, leather, and none. Now there are a thousand different categories, each broken down into a thousand sub-categories. Do you go running primarily in the morning, when the sidewalks are glistening with dew? There’s a shoe for you. Do you frequently go mountain hiking, and as soon as you reach the summit, start tap-dancing to “Uptown Funk?” There’s a shoe for you. Do you keep your shoes on in a chlorinated swimming pool because of that weird phobia you’d prefer not to talk about? Our phobia shoes are right this way, valued customer.

Weird feet make the process even harder. Lengthwise, my feet have been at a flat 12-and-a-half since the mid-1990s, when one last teenaged growth spurt gave me the proportions of a sasquatch. But for feet of that length, they’re wider than they should be. If a normal foot is oblong like the tip of a rowing paddle, mine are like ceiling tiles with toes. That makes it frustrating to find a shoe with a good fit. Many a time I’ve thought about simply building my own footwear with a bucket of superglue and the rubber from old bicycle tires.

That would at least be the most economical option, because after you’ve finally sifted through waterproof running shoes, all-weather hiking shoes, air-soled cross-trainers and eco-friendly tennis sneaks, you’re probably shelling out at least a hundred bucks for your chosen pair. And it doesn’t end there. If you’ve got flat feet, like I do, you also have to drop sixty hard-earned clams on inserts for your much-needed bridge support. By the time you walk out of the store you’ve got more money on your feet than you do in your wallet. If you ever find yourself strapped for cash in a bartering situation, just fork over your shoes. The recipient can sell them on eBay for prices that rival those of German auto parts.

I’m lucky in the sense that I’m perfectly content to buy, and wear, one pair of all-purpose shoes at a time. This mitigates the cost and inconvenience of shopping somewhat. Not everyone can get away with that. Maybe your job requires specialized footwear, like boots, and your company won’t buy them for you because the CEO is embezzling money to pay for his Ritalin addiction. Maybe you’re a fashionista and need to own at least 14 pairs at all times. Maybe you’re secretly The Incredible Hulk and you destroy your Nikes every time you get angry. Could happen.

Whatever the scenario, it’s a lot of time and expense. It used to be that time and expense were rewarded with a personalized touch at the local shoe outlet, but an almost imperceptible shift has taken place over the years: Clerks are no longer allowed to touch your feet. When I was a child, the friendly shoe-slingers at the mall would reach down and measure my foot with one of those metal doohickeys, then help me slip into pair after pair, even threading and tightening the laces for me. This was almost luxurious, in the way that being fanned with palm fronds on a tropical beach is luxurious.

Now they just hang back and awkwardly watch as you do all the work yourself. Nobody informed me this change was going to occur. Never got an email, never got a letter. I’m sure it’s a liability thing; some clerk somewhere probably got kicked in the teeth by a customer with over-sensitive reflexes, or a litigious shopper sued for injuries when a strong-handed salesperson squeezed their ankle a little too hard. These changes happen for a reason. But this robs the whole shoe buying experience of its charm, which is all it ever had going for it to begin with.

Why can’t I just go and quickly find a comfortable pair of shoes? If he were a real person, I’d do my shopping with Forrest Gump. He can spot a decent set anywhere.