One Day Without Shoes

I come across some of the strangest things online. Don’t we all? Our inboxes are full of cool, gross, and humorous clips friends have forwarded to us from the Internet. Today i found a fun little site that’s my favorite kind of find – an off-beat, funky, worthy cause. One Day Without Shoes is hosted and support by MSN/Microsoft and Tom’s Shoes – a shoe manufacturer who promises for every pair of shoes purchased, one pair goes to a child in need. And as far as i can tell – that’s 365 days a year. Awesome. The goal for One Day Without Shoes is to raise awareness of children in poverty who have never had a pair of shoes and some of the problems that arise – diseases, infections, and bias – that come from being shoeless in a shoed world. According to Tom’s, 300 million children are without shoes. That’s a lot of little exposed toes in a cold, cold world. Tom’s is asking us to go barefoot for the day to raise awareness. And of course buy a pair of shoes.


I like the sentiment. But i wonder the overall sanity. I mean, we’re born without shoes. Humans have existed for thousands and thousands of years without shoes. Of course, there weren’t 6.9 billion people back then. That many people tend to make a helluva lot of garbage – followed closely by an equal amount of parasites and other ickies that probably didn’t exist.

And something else occurred to me, if there’re so many bugs, infections, and other not-so-pleasant things out there waiting to attack us, why is Tom’s asking us to go without shoes for a day? Isn’t that like asking for a lawsuit? “Tom asked me to go without shoes and I did and I got this nasty cut on my foot and then it got infected and now I’ve been to the doctor three times and they can’t get rid of the infection and I’ve missed more work than I have sick days…” Can’t you just hear that conversation with some lawyer?

Yet overall it feels like a real Berkeley moment and the biggest eye-brow raiser in all this, is that Tom’s is doing what all manufacturers should be doing – giving. Sure, they’re raising awareness of their own product and hopefully selling a butt-load of shoes, but they are simultaneously raising awareness of children in poverty who have no shoes at all. Don’t be one-sided; you know we are going to buy shoes. It’s a profit-profit situation and the best of what any company should aspire.

As for me, no need to ask twice to go barefoot. I love being barefoot. Reminds me of summer, the beach, of being a kid. So i vote for going One Day Without Shoes. At least in places it’s not illegal. We have laws for that in America because – hygiene issues. Duh.