courtesy Volkswirt

Bare feet ain’t just for country folk

My hometown of Roanoke, Virginia is nestled in the valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As mountain folks, we’ve had our share of pick up trucks, mullets and, yes, nasty bare feet. There, I said it; nasty bare feet. Crazy that it would take a trip halfway across the world for me to put my foot down on this grimy topic.  For my parents, my parent’s parents and all the country people in possession of their own teeth striving to exemplify dignity, there are places nary a bare foot should tread.

Here on the northern beaches of Sydney, Australia I’ve found folk more country than the most backward, tobacco chewing, tar spitting, ragged-pant-cuff having hillbilly rebel ever could be.  How could I call folks in this cosmopolitan culture backwards? Easy, I’ve never seen a group of people more prone to stroll in bare naked feet. You’d think maybe it was just the kids. You’d be wrong.

What makes barefoot nasty

On a recent trip, we pulled over in one of those rest stops on the road. The ones where you guess the janitorial staff must live in an RV and travel up and down state roads cleaning new toilets everyday. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had cursed this particular rest-stop making a pact to never step foot in the cold cement enclosure ever again. The  flies were meaty, like little hummingbirds. The flies were so big they seemed to bump into people as folks walked into the bathroom. Other flies lay motionless in the off gray sink, basking in the dim haze of an overworked florescent bulb.  I wasn’t sure if they were dead or sleeping it off.

courtesy Nick Sherman

In much of Australia, they’ve gotten smarter about men’s toilets. Rather than develop individual stalls, they’ve taken the cattle call approach. Two adjoining walls that eventually run together in a corner are fitted with aluminum panels that run down into a trough. Water trickles from the aluminum walls to wash everything down the drain. Of course, men are not known for their accuracy in this department and this invitation for indiscriminate placement might seem to help. It doesn’t. Everywhere is wet. I can’t help but do my business mindful to touch nothing and avoid eye contact with everything if I can help it. The soap dispenser should have been filled with penicillin instead of soap. It was filled with neither.

As I’m standing outside, waiting for my son to come out, I see a young boy jump out of a van and dash into the same restroom. He has no shoes on, only bare feet. There is no running after him pleading, “for the love of all that is sacred, put your shoes on.” Nothing. My son comes out, his eyes wide as he points in the direction of the kid that just went into the bathroom.

I’m flabbergasted. From an early age boys and men instinctively know not to stare at a man in the stall next to you; I wanted to violate the rule to be sure I saw what I thought I saw. I Didn’t do it, but that kid did. He went into a public restroom with no shoes on. Ehhhwwww.

Courtesy ColorBlindPicaso

Later the next day we stopped at a gas station. There ahead of me pumping gas into a late-model silver Ford Falcon a man casually crosses one foot over the other. He would be the epitome of cool if he had shoes on, but no, he doesn’t. So his is not.

By this point, I’ve got to figure it out. Isn’t it bad to walk around barefoot? Especially in places where there are chemicals that can blow up or places that harbor body fluids?

When did shoes get so popular?

I give my kids grief for any journey outside of the house not accompanied by the shoes we’ve worked hard to put on their feet. I inherited this aversion from my parents who in turn learned from theirs. If you think about it though, somewhere up the line, some whining, whinging wimp couldn’t suck it up and wrapped some leaves around his feet, giving rise to shoes. For hundreds of thousands of years, the human race has lived without shoes.  I’m reminded of this every year during Black history month when I watch the mini-series, Shaka Zulu. There is a scene where Shaka Zulu eschews shoes, demonstrating the superiority of the human foot by stepping on a hot coal with his bare feet.

Researchers still debate exactly over when footwear was invented. The plant and leather material used for early shoes degraded quickly, leaving few clues for archeologists say scholars. You can look at their study of feet here.

However, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis examined partial skeletal remains of feet in Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic. The feet were weaker, which was explained by the introduction of shoes.

This ” shows the reduced lesser toe strength, all dating to about 26,000 years ago,” said Washington University scientists.  In other words, shoes are actually bad for us. Yikes.

“I discovered that the bones of the little toes of humans from that time frame were much less strongly built than those of their ancestors while their leg bones remained large and strong,” Trinkaus said. “The most logical cause would be the introduction of supportive footwear.”

Shoes can’t be all bad, can they?

So there it is. Scientists say, wearing shoes weakens your feet. True, but the bottom of my feet coming in contact New York City subway station concrete weakens my knees. The idea of skipping without shoes next to pumps at a gas station nauseates my understanding. NOT, GONNA HAPPEN!!! Don’t care how weak my pinkie toe gets, I’ll duct-tape that sucker till lack of circulation turns that puppy blue.

In his  stellar article, You Walk Wrong,  journalist Adam Sternbergh crushes myth after myth about walking bare foot. In his article, he explains that adding padding to our feet dulls the more than 200,000 nerve endings in our feet preventing them from transmitting vital information to our brain which in turn coordinates the entire body’s reaction to our feet. Without this information, the brain allows the body to absorb more stress than it should and eventually leads to foot problems.

I knew there was a reason why shoes are necessary

The research is not looking good for my paranoia. But at the root of my paranoia is the nastiness of walking around barefooted. You could step in spit, boo boo or on some dangerous animal like the hookworm. While spit and boo boo are just plain nasty, hookworms are bad news.

These nasty parasites hang out in the intestines of infected animals, then hitch a ride out of the bowels to see the light of day. Once at their final destination, they infect the soil and can infect a person walking bare feet.  The CDC has the gruesome details, check it out.

Like forgotten bogey men of our parent’s day, these nasty critters once prevalent in developed countries, are now, for the most part, ghosts of the past. But you never know when you’re walking on infected soil, do you?

On a serious note though, “Hookworm’s neglected status partly reflects its concentration among the world’s poorest 2.7 billion people who live on less than $2 a day,” says a report issues by the Public Library of Science. You can read the entire report by visiting here.

Knowing what I know about those critters, I’m sticking to my guns. Barefoot folks in gas stations, public restrooms and restaurants – I do not want to see crusty nasty soles while I’m eating my burger – are gross. Sorry, Robinson edict. Now everywhere else, I think I may get a pedicure and let me feet feel the pavement. Oh, and yes, I’ll be passing my misguided paranoia on to my kids, although I’ll let them get away with one now and again.

No two ways about it, staring is impolite. So, with great pleasure, I bestowed a wide-eyed Mike Singletary stare on four Australian teenagers eating a meal on the other side of a glass McDonald’s door in a restroom waiting area. For good measure, I pointed at them and feigned a whisper to my 11-year-old son blatantly daring the impolite teenagers to respond to my childish actions. Yes, I’m 40 and I still haven’t learned to always take the high road.

As a 40-year-old black American, I’ve grown accustomed to stares. My parents made sacrifices early in my life and moved us to the regular dinner times and bedtime stories that haunted predominately white suburbs with schools that would fill my childhood and adolescence with rich experiences and naked ugliness. Somewhere in between those two extremes, lurked the stares of unfamiliar friends and familiar enemies. I came to know the unwitting power of seemingly benign stares.

I was surprised to come across a book on the subject, Staring: How We Look, by Rosemarie Garland Thomson. She clinically dissects the peculiar nature of staring and fine tunes the murky details of the age old, unavoidable attraction it wields over our eyes:

We stare when ordinary seeing fails, when we want to know more. So staring is an interrogative gesture that asks what’s going on and demands the story. The eyes hang on, working to recognize what seems illegible, order what seems unruly, know what seems strange. Staring begins as an impulse that curiosity can carry forward into engagement.

Curiosity can be at the heart of staring, but my experiences also knew that staring was a silent segregator, dividing those who belong from those who do not. The teenager’s stares reminded me of those experiences. Their furtive glances and stiffled giggles fired up emotions long ignored, relegated to obsolescence. Anger and rage were normally inappropriate responses to the primary motivator for staring, curiosity.

The problem is, the stare automatically betrays the starers understanding of what is normal, casting the object of the stare, the staree as abnormal in some shape fashion or form.

“Staring offers an occasion to rethink the status quo. Who we are can shift into focus by staring at who we think we are not,” Thomson writes.  This creates the power struggle inherent in the stare that we feel but don’t understand. The staree is defined against a fictional backdrop created by the starer. In the case of two people attracted to each other, the backdrop is mutually beneficial for both the starer and the staree. “Staring encounters nonetheless draft starees into a story of the starer’s making, whatever that story might be, whether they like it or not,” concludes Thomson.

I can remember one of my earliest memories as a child was a staring incident in which I, the starer concocted a story for my staring subject. I couldn’t have been older than five and I was on a trip with my mother to the supermarket. The American era of free love was drawing to an end in the seventies and hippies were everywhere. Following close behind my mother, I rounded the corner in what I believed to be the dairy section. Riveted by what I saw my hand rose with a pointed finger singling out the focus of my youthful attention. I spoke loudly, to my mother’s eventual mortification.

“Momma,” I shouted in semi-joy, amazement, and curiosity. “Is that Jesus?”
My mother’s lowered head and aggressive tugging gave me the sneaking suspicion my answer was, “oh my gosh no, you are such an embarrassing child, please stop staring and didn’t I teach you not to point at people?”
In that moment, I created a world for the anonymous grocery store patron to fit into. Even children have the power to create a world into which adults conform.

So, I grew up practiced in the silent art of staring as most of us do. The suburbs prepared me well to become invisible to the stares that I would so often get. When we notice we are the subject of staring, we are forced to respond in some way. Even the choice to ignore is an initiated action. I recently spoke with a friend, the child of a military officer stationed overseas. While stationed in Japan, he vividly remembers an incident in which children walked up to him and began rubbing his brown skin, which they clearly had never seen before. They stared and touched in stunning amazement.

“I pulled my arm back,” he said, “but my father stopped me and told me to hold my hand out.” As his father explained to him, even if he didn’t understand, he was representing a whole new realm of understanding for those children enamored by his skin and his appearance. His father taught him to smile at the stares; his very presence was educational. He still remembers that lesson to this day.

I can understand this perspective, but the teenagers who had been eying my family, whispering amongst themselves as they gawked at our existence was proving to be unsettling. I had traveled across the world to enjoy the Australian culture and, as a veteran of the staring game, I was seldom unsettled. But the nature of the stares surpassed even my appalling experience on a South Korean bus in 1987. After coming to a complete stop, the bus driver turned to me and stared me up and down the entire time the light was red. His uncomfortable and obtrusive gaze never wandered from my 18-year-old frame. Only the anxious honking of horns from the cars behind him, who clearly had no idea of the wonder he had found, jarred him to unfix his uncomfortable stare and drive the damn bus.

The stare wields the power to render a person’s being, accomplishments, shortcomings and heroics obsolete. Inherent in the stare is the ability to reduce a person to a shell of their real self, substituting perceived stereotypes, notions of value, and worthlessness. In this ocular transaction, there is the potential for tension. My pointing display was evidence of my desire to ratchet up the tension; return the favor to the starer. It hadn’t worked, they continued to take unwanted glances, smirking and joking with each turn back to their table of peers.

In that moment, I was thankful I had talked with my children before they ever arrived in Australia. We talked about standing up for ourselves and never allowing anyone’s words, fingers or eyes make us feel uncomfortable. I communicated to them how important it was to understand people stare because they seldom see black Americans here and as my friend’s father taught him, smiling and educating the curious about who we are allows everyone to win. We talked about ignoring the stares and never internalizing them.

I was satisfied when my daughter came home laughing because a little Australian child around the age of five ran to her mother, pointing at my children, “Mum, look at their faces!!!” My daughter got it, she knew she was complete whole and beautiful and the child was simply amazed by her. Her laughter warmed, she could protect herself from the pressure of the stares. But, there is a point, where curiosity becomes blatant rudeness. I was now there. Question was, what was I going to do about it.

We were in the town of Gimpy, Queensland eating at a McDonald’s after being on the road for six hours. My grump factor was up as I was tired and hungry. The gawking teenagers had tested my patience and it was time to put an end to it, they clearly hadn’t gotten my impolite warning.

As my family walked out of the restroom waiting area toward the cashier and past the teenagers, they looked down at their food and a wave of patience came over me. I stared at their table, no one stared back. Thankful for my second wind of patience, I was happy to put the moment behind me, but as I passed their table preparing to get into the long line to order, I saw at least six other faces from all ages staring blankly at myself and my family. Would it always be like this? My second wind of anger filled me.

Unable to control myself, a smile came across my face as I stepped back to the table of giggling teenagers. Pausing momentarily, as I towered over their table my mouth opened, I didn’t know what was about to slide past my tongue. They had stopped giggling, and were now looking at the black man leaning into their table, their space of private jokes and shared conversation.

“I’m just curious, did you all want to ask me something,” I courteously questioned, distributing an even stare to each of the starees seated at the table? They all quickly said no, hoping to diffuse the awkward situation that was now unfolding. I paused again.

“Are you sure,” I asked again, staring ever more deeply into their eyes. They all again said no.
“Well, let me know if you do,” I offered as I left the table. They didn’t seem as curious as I thought they might, but no matter. I was no longer angry, no longer grumpy, only hungry.

I’m forty years old and up until yesterday, I’ve only ever had black hands cutting my hair.  That was up until yesterday. There are those who will say what’s the big deal and still others whose hand covered mouths are still fixed in an O-shape completing a long sound with the word “SNAP!!.” It’s just one of those things.

It’s not a dirty secret, but something that our differences bring out. My hair is kinky, despite the days when I lay the gel on hard and get that pseudo “good hair” look – refrain from any extracurricular comments here. I take my head to a kinky hair specialist because just like a peculiar compound, my hair has its own unique properties and qualities.

I was leaving for Sydney, Australia and the word on the street was that Blacks were so sparsely represented that finding a barber would be a difficult task. Just like any concerned consumer, I consulted experts.

“What do you think Brian,” I asked my barber before departing for the savage land that lacked the civilized touches of a barber for my head. He was a man I held in high esteem. No just because of his uncanny ability to fade your hair until parts of your scalp were invisible, but his proficiency in barbershop psychiatry was second to only Freud if he were a barber.

“Hmmm,” he puzzled as he spun me round in the chair.  “You know we can just go ahead and shave it all off.”

His advice was sound and practical albeit drastic. It had taken me roughly two years to locate a barber that didn’t have me looking like an eraser. I still remember my first visit to that particular barbershop, The Ultimate in College Park, GA. I got scalped by an older guy who claimed to be a barber. Unable to locate my hairstyle on the chart at the front of the store, I proceeded to provide the older dude with hand gestures pointing to location on my scalp where I expected to see fades and bubbles, lines and definition. When the do was completed, and I was given the mirror to gaze upon his creation, my eyes started twitching.

I was left looking like Larry Blackmon from Cameo without the decency of handing me cup to complete the look. If I didn’t look like Larry Blackmon, I looked like a Big Daddy Kane groupie 20 years too late and to corporate to count. I told dude to just take it all down and recognized I’d have to try again but neva eva, eva, eva with that decrepit barber again. Every time I see that dude in the shop I still want to bi#@$ slap him.

Ultimately, I decided against going bald. My style gave me just the right mix to fit in with my corporate duties and my rebellious inclinations. A sort of quite fight the power if you will.

My dilemma was unavoidable. I consulted with old friends asking them to poll their personal networks seeking the needle in a haystack. The prognosis was grim. Brian’s recommendation didn’t make the day brighter. Like a binge drinker just before last call, I needed that righteous last cut. Brian set about crafting the masterpiece that has earned him the nickname “Miracle Worker” in my family. At it’s conclusion, his handy work was evident and his kindness even greater. “This one’s on the house,” he smiled. With that final cut, I was now on my own to find a suitable replacement for the likes of the Miracle Worker in a land far, far away.

Upon my arrival in Sydney, I began spying, eying and questioning. Pretty soon, I had my line of questioning down. “Do you know where I might find an ethnic barber?” Most folks looked a little puzzled. Wasn’t sure if they were puzzled because they didn’t know where one was or if it was because they couldn’t see the need for it. You must understand there are few, few Black people in Australia. I’ve gone weeks without seeing someone that looked like me.

Like a ticking time bomb, I carried my days on knowing that day by day my hair was growing. As the time approached for me to begin looking for a job, I knew my dilemma was growing out of control and would reach a head soon. Either I would locate a barber or I would have to shave off all of my hair. Shaving it all off wasn’t necessarily a bad option, but the fact is I’m forty. The way I figure it, there may come a time when I can’t grow hair, so I need to grow as much of it as I can while I can.

While walking to a class in downtown Manly near the wharf, I saw a barber executing a pretty decent fade on a tall white guy. I was late for class so I made a mental note of the place, maybe someday it would come in handy. I’d searched online for at least an hour with no luck. I could find beauty saloons for women with ethnic hair, but no barbers. That weekend, I played my ace in the hole.

I’d heard of a place called Blacktown inhabited my minorities including a large contingent of Africans. It was a family outing. We all piled into the car and traveled the 40 miles or so. Some days I plan well, others not so much. On this particular day, I could have saved us some grief by calling ahead. We arrived at 3:30 PM and they closed at 3:00 PM. There was not a soul in site. Uggghhh.

Things were now officially desperate. Later that week I traveled back to Manly to locate the barbershop. I found the shop but walked around outside contemplating my options.  There were no black barbers to be found. I was tempted to just chalk it up to “Not gonna happen,” but instead decided to at least inquire as to the cost of the cut.

“Twenty six dollars,” the man said. I would later find that his name was Frank and he in fact was the owner of the shop. He had been open for business for seven years now.

“Do you know how to cut my hair,” I asked.

“Sure,” he said without pausing. Oddly enough, that wasn’t as comforting as I had hoped it would be. Knowing that my only other option was baldness, I decided to have a seat and see where the chips would fall. He appeared to be Latino, Cuban if I had to put money on it.

As I took my place in the calmly painted white interior shop, I spied a stack of Murray’s hair pomade on the neatly lined glass shelf behind me. Both the orange and the black cans. My hope was restored. I relaxed a little as the clippers sprung into action with a familiar click and hum.

“I see you have some Murrays back there,” I said, attaching a question with my tone.

“Oh that,” he responded in his thick Aussie accent. “The English guys love that.” Now I was puzzled. Murray’s pomade is a thick waxy greasy pomade most notably used to generate waves in short hair for the brothas. I would now be educated on my ignorance. Frank informed me that it was also used by the surfers as it would allow them to style their hair and the pomade made their hair virtually waterproof. That was news to me. I was now receiving an international education.

Frank set about working on a zero fade with an afro top. His technique, razor and comb, was curious. I’d never experienced the technique before, so the question was – how would it look when completed? It took an hour during which time he filled me in on the different rugby styles prevalent in Australia. We discussed kids, parenting and business partners. I was at ease.

When it was done, it was different. But it was a good cut that I was satisfied with. Thankfully, I think I found a barber for the short time till I can get back to the states.

************** Update 16/03/2010***************

I’ve been in Australia for a little over a week and I must say I find it amazing. I spent some time detailing my first days. I awoke early in the am to type the words into my pc, only to lose my thoughts to an incoherent mind fumbling to recover from jet lag. I forgot to save the words before powering down. Note to self number one, no writing with bad jet lag.

Now relieved of that twanging sensation which is  not unlike a hammered tuning fork, I can think clearly free from the ill effects that such a long damn trip collects. Long being 24 hours traveling and sitting in small seats bolted into big airports with famous names.

The flight was interminably long. With a stop in Chicago and then one in LA, both beautiful cities, I was beat before the journey started. There were delays leaving Atlanta, roughly two hours.  Luckily the Chicago flight was only delayed by three hours so I only had an hour wait upon my arrival in the windy city. LA was another hour delay. It wouldn’t have been as bad if there were enough time to actually grab a deep dish pizza in Chicago or a Tommy’s tamale in LA. But, nope, tha wasn’t happening.

By the time the 16 hour flight from LA to Sydney was underway, I’d already spent 8 hours sitting or flying. Caught between something that vaguely resembled sleep and a knawing ache  running down the back of my spine and seeping just underneath my knee caps, it was less then comfortable. It was just uncomfortable enough for me to think about it, but not that uncomfortable that I actually got up and walked around the plane.

As is the recurring theme in my adult life, there were very few African-Americans on board. Walking around seemed to me an invitation for scrutiny from foreign eyes with alien ideas about just what my story was. Was I a ball player, singer or jumping bail to evade the long arm of the law? Funny thing is, I to had foreign eyes spying two other brothas on the plane. They travelled together and dressed in Lycra/nylon sweats and basketball shoes, their height seduced me into a stereo type: what team did they play for? Seeing them did comfort me though. It gave me the illusion I wouldn’t be alone when I landed in Sydney. There were now at least two other brothas in the country.

Not that I didn’t mind some eyes on me. Truth be told, I felt I was looking moderately fly in my newly acquired brown vest, smartly contrasting light beige ribbed shirt, and sufficiently dress-casual jeans. To top the entire ensemble off, there were a pair of brownish yellow pull on soft soled dress shoes adorning my feet. I thought I looked better then I had in years. At the end of the day in the consideration to walk or sit, sitting won out. I still got stares and unfortunately, it wasn’t because of my funky fresh gear.

The flight was scheduled for 16 hours, in the end, we did it in 15. Yea for great piloting. When I dragged my fresh dressed tired butt into Sydney, the weather was great and the scenery tropical. My eyes darted to and fro to greedily suck up any details they could discern. The palm trees waved in the wind and the overcast day promised a warm but gentle experience as I hoped in the waiting car and we drove the 45 minutes to my new home in Mona Vale, New South Wales.

How many MJ crosswalks can you count?

Along the way, I took in the sights and sounds that were Sydney. I saw cars that were familiar, but many more there weren’t. The first thing I was immediately struck by was what I perceived to be an unhealthy veneration and worship of Michael Jackson at every other street corner. In my American mindset, I saw signs at each crosswalk that hearkened me to the days of Thriller and I anxiously awaited street dancers to jump in the middle of the street popping locking and throwing down a bogaloo for good measure.

Turns out it was just a cross walk sign. There would be plenty more aha moments ahead for me if I could just survive the ride home. Again, my American mindset knew that in Australia the driving rules held that  “the left side is the best side and the right side is suicide.”  Despite the rules and conventions, the brain has certain elements of life that have become instinctual. Mindless violations of those instincts, without fail – for safety reasons- trigger alarms that widens eyes, tightens grips and causes a certain shallow breathing.

With every turn that we made, I couldn’t help but pause mid sentence, prepared to holler, “get on the right side!” Things have progressed though. Now not only can I sit while watching others drive Engilsh, but I can drive English and even navigate the unique round-a-bouts that seemingly hang out at the end of every street scattered across the greater Sydney area.