As the second laziest person in the world, it can take me years to make even simple changes or figure something out. I mean, I just put up my new smoke detector after months. I had nothing. I live in an ancient apartment that is locally known as the Hotel Kindling. Fear of death didn’t even motivate me.
(BTW, the laziest person in the world is King Tut. Everyone thinks he’s long dead. That’s how lazy he is. He’s my hero.)
I’ve had knee issues for a while. I played soccer for 30ish years. I’m tall and heavy and not getting younger. Glucosamine helps. I’ve got a fair number of shoes. I usually have New Balance so I can get my 13 double wide. Shoes that fit kind of trump everything. You’ve probably seen (or have) those new kind of shoes with the super cushion. I wear https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XXLGPY2 Which, wow, did I really pay that much? I don’t think so. I think I got them on sale. Anyway, I recommend them. It’s very padded for hard surfaces. But not so padded you’ll break your ankles. I got the recommendation from a fellow dog guy who is also a bartender. I knew he was on his feet all day/night and asked him what he recommended. He said they were a game changer. I agree.
But I kept feeling a prick in my arch now and then. I thought it was…something pricking me. A pebble. A thorn. King Tut’s unused dental floss. <–weak callback
I couldn’t figure it out. When my knee bugged me too much, I walk in the park. And you think, sure, a park is softer. But Los Angeles “parks” are hard. The ground here is hard. Not a whole lot of moisture, no matter if there’s grass or not. I’ve been here so long, whenever I fly into any region that isn’t desert, when I look down, I’m AMAZED at the green. I forget. Oh yeah, most of the world is greenish. Unless it’s water. But I don’t walk on water very often. Too salty.
So…on reflection, it didn’t make much sense that I felt better walking in a park with incredibly uneven surfaces and fairly hard ground. Today, I felt the prick again. Pulled my insert out for the 1000th time and felt around to try and deduce WTF was going on. And then I had a brainstorm. It’s not my arch, or socks, or the surface of the insert, or the shoe, it’s the SIDE of the insert. I’m pronating.
Probably, my legs are not exactly the same length down to the nanometer. I wasn’t constructed in a factory. I was constructed by the same lazy high priests who put King Tut back together and they did as lazy a job on me. <–weaker callback. So when my slightly-unequal legs touch, I’m going to tilt my foot / and those squishy shoes are going to tilt even further. AND, I mentioned I’m super lazy, because I don’t tie my laces very tight. Because I like to slip on and off because tying shoes is for jerkfaces and non-slovenly folks. So I end up tilting even more. And then the side of the insert will actually poke me.
And all this will aggravate my joints. And the reason grass is comfier is because I wear different shoes on grass. Shoes that are tighter because it’s uneven grass and there’s real risk of rolling ankles and tripping on embedded sprinklers or stepping in gopher holes or something something King Tut’s something. <–best callback
All of this took a LONG time for me to figure out. As a single guy, there’s just me. So if I’m walking around with my pants on backwards and my nose on fire, I’ll never notice and probably no one will tell me because they think I’m trying to be cool. “Oh, check out Mr. Flaming Nose. He thinks he’s so hip, but that was so last month.”
tl;dr – lace your shoes tighter
