About a year ago, I bought the boots on the right. I like how they look. They are suede, with a fuzzy inside. They are warm. But they have two faults. One: They are not watertight. In fluffy snow, they will keep your feet warm and dry. In the heavy, rain-saturated snow that covered my fair city this morning, they would not. During my walk with my dog, the boots got soaking wet at the feet, and my got wet. Two: They are difficult to put on and take off. There is a narrowness at the ankle, so that I point my foot down into it, then my heel won't go down past the ankle of the boot, and I have to pull the top of the boot, wiggle my foot, pull, wiggle, pull, wiggle, until finally, eventually, my heel can slide down to where it belongs, and the boot is on. Then the other foot. This is rather strenuous exercise in the dark, early hours when I just got up. Then when I get home, I have to pull off the boot, twist it, pull, twist, pull, twist, until finally it will come off my foot. Sometimes I get a Charlie horse in the process.
Last night's weather prediction came true. It snowed all night, then rained all morning. The snow cover was ankle deep, soft, and watery. I drove into Bellingham for work and stayed there all day. The snow was pretty much gone by the end of the day there. But here it Lynden it lingers. Streets important enough to rate a plow are clear, but my street and those where I walk my dog are in a state of primitive nature. The snow is still deep, but it is just barely solid slush. You walk on it and it squishes and splatters out from under your foot with a splashy sound. Your footprint fills with water.
I happened to run into my dad in the garage. When I pulled into our driveway after work, I thought that before I would even go into the house, I would throw down some ice melter on the front sidewalk. I hope it doesn't harm the flora, but better the grass should suffer than my parents should slip and fall. So I went in the garage at the same time as my dad was coming into the garage from the house with cardboard for recycle. In the course of our chatting, I told the tale of my boots. I bemoaned that my feet would get all wet when I walked my dog. Dad said he also had a pair of boots that were difficult for him to pull on and off. However, they were waterproof. He said if I wanted to try them, I could. Maybe since my foot is smaller than his, I could put them on more easily.
Yes, I could. I could still feel that they were tight at the ankles, but not tight enough to drive me to extremes of exertion. And of course when I had them on, the foot part of the boot was much bigger than my foot inside it. But I wore them, trudging through the slush. It reminded me of that old joke insult, "Your mother wears army boots." Someone could say that to my dog. Fortunately, he doesn't care what I wear. He's very non-judgmental about my looks. That's one of the reasons I love him. At any rate, my feet in their spacious chamber were dry.
Since both boots were extremely tight in the ankle for the size of foot they're made for, I have to believe that what seemed like a design flaw was actually a feature. But why? What possible good reason could there be to make boots with ankles so tight that you work up a sweat trying to put them on?
Yet another reason January is an endurance test. The reward is survival. If by January 31st you have not broken your bones on the ice, caught pneumonia from the cold, wet weather, or committed some act of desperation born of darkness and tight boots, then you win. Your prize: go on with your life. Keep gritting your teeth. Just February and then the primroses will be for sale in front of Safeway and RiteAid, and you'll know spring is really going to come.
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