I saw a girl the other day barefooting around town. I think she came out of the library (didn't know you could barefoot in library). Anyway I love to go barefoot but am hesitant to walk the city streets and sidewalks barefooted although I have in the past. Maybe I'm just a germ freak or something. I feel more comfortable with flops on, on the street. BTW sometimes there is broken glass on our street. What do y'all think out there in Hippieville????? I would be interested to find out if my paranoi a is normal or not!!!
I think your paranoia is common, but not necessary. I go barefoot around town all the time, including supermarkets, gas stations, dept. stores, restaurants, the post office, etc., never have a problem (although sometimes people who see me have a problem) and it feels great!
I've barefooted in cities all over the world and never had a problem yet. We just finished a tour of the Eastern US including Baltimore, New York and DC. In terms of germs, your hands encounter far more than your feet ever will, and you touch your face with your hands. In terms of glass, barefooters, unlike shoddies, watch where they walk, so the big stuff is no problem, and our soles are tough enough to where the small pieces can't penetrate. There are actually very few places you cannot go barefoot if you carry yourself right. Most folks simply don't look down.
Yeah, and alot of folks don't even look where they're going! I think that's a major benefit of barefooting, being more aware of your surroundings. I stepped on a large shard of glass and cut my foot this past summer. It went through the sole of my shoe. Had I been barefoot I'd have seen it because I give the ground ahead of me a visual sweep every so often so I always know what I'll be walking on. I know what you mean about feeling weird about being barefoot in a city full of shoddies though, at first I felt the same way. Now I wonder why so many poeple wear shoes ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME and that's what seems weird now. It's like a mental illness.
I've got back into it recently. Been going to the Supermarket in the evening barefoot. First few time was very conscious but last night I just completely forgot and got on with it. Yea, of course people were looking (and talking) as usual, but it was great to reach the point where I wasn't even aware myself that I was barefoot - it just felt normal!
So today I went into a library barefoot and no one said anything to me. However when it came time to go to the bathroom I just couldn't bring myself to go into the bathroom where many people miss the urninal. Don't think I can get past that. :sniff1:
You've taken great strides (pun intended) on the road to barefooting! Congratulations on your first great visit among many to the places you love to go best and formerly thought were barred from visiting barefoot. Regarding the restroom, there's really no danger there aside from the "ewwww" factor. Like any other environment, you watch where you step; 95% of the time, there's always a clean spot to stand and if not, you can always choose to use the commode.
Seohsreven is right, Fedora. There's nothing in that restroom floor that can hurt you, no more than what's on the ground or streets anywhere. I think it's just the idea of it that may be giving you a problem. I have no problem walking into public restrooms barefoot. I would try to avoid stepping into something that's obviously wet if I can avoid it, but if I can't, so be it. You have a much, much greater chance of catching some infection or disease from touching things with your bare hands than your bare feet. Anything you touch with your hands in a restroom has probably also been touched by many other people who have also touched various parts of their body including their own urine or feces. And the big difference between our hands and our feet is that our feet are highly unlikely to ever touch anything else except the floor or the ground, whereas our hands will be touching lots of other places on our own bodies, including our face, mouth and nose, as well as touching food we may eat later, and other people in various places. We can wash our hands all we want, but still how are you going to avoid touching something else while you're still in that environment? Even if you are as germaphobic as Howard Hughes was, just getting out of the restroom without touching something might be next to impossible. For example, if, after washing your hands, you try to avoid touching the door handle by holding a paper towel or toilet tissue, who's to say that even the paper towel doesn't have some germs on it? I’ll admit, there was a time a few years ago when I was reluctant to go into a California freeway rest stop restroom barefoot. In my opinion, the rest stops in California have the filthiest restrooms of any I’ve ever seen. But research and logic convinced me that other than the “eeww...” factor, for me to believe and declare to others that going barefoot is no less safe than wearing shoes, my reluctance to go into one of those restrooms barefoot was nothing short of hypocrisy. For a barefooter, the most practical and safest thing in the long run is just to walk in barefoot, not worry about it at all, and just wash our hands to the best of our ability before leaving. In that way our body has the best chance of doing its job of naturally fighting off any potential infections, as it always does continually as we live in this world. Bare feet were made to touch the ground or whatever surface we're walking on. That's their job, their function. The ground, or floor, is not required to be clean and sanitary for our feet to function properly and our bodies to remain healthy.
If my feet have city filth on them at the end of the day I'll simply rinse them off with a hose before stepping into the house. The technique I use is to put the hose spout on the driveway, turn on the water, then I rub my feet on the concrete like doing the chicken shuffle. I then turn off the water and walk around on clean dry concrete to dry off before going into the house. But I hear you about the public bathrooms and urinals. I sometimes try to stand as far away from the urinal as I possibly can or I try to straddle the piss puddle.
Right. I do that, but the point is if you step right in it, it won't hurt you. And if you have to, you have to. Actually, I almost never use the urinals. As a rule, I go into a stall to urinate, but standing of course, just like I would at home in my own bathroom. I just like the privacy better, plus there is usually more room to stand and place your feet.
