Barefeet

Some may wonder why I chose the name Barefoot Cajun. The Cajun part is easy - because I am one. I was raised in south Louisiana born to two Cajuns from deep in the heart of Cajun country. I can trace my roots right back to the Acadians of Nova Scotia and beyond back to France. However, the Barefoot part may not be so easy to understand or maybe it is.

I hate wearing shoes. At 43 years old still the first thing I do when I get home is kick my shoes off. If I'm out in my yard, I don't have shoes on. In fact, if I'm in my office I don't have shoes on. My coworkers are used to this, thankfully.

Here's my morning shoe routine -
1. Put shoes on only as I'm walking out the door
2. Get in the car and kick them off to drive
3. Put them on to go into the office
4. Then kick them off as soon as I sit at my desk
5. Don't put them on again (unless we have clients in the building) until I leave at 5 pm
6. Kick them off to drive home
7. Put them on to get out of the car at home
8. Kick them off as soon as I walk in the door of the house

Man, I just realized that's a whole lot of on and off with the shoes, isn't it?

From the time I was a child I didn't like wearing shoes. My feet get hot in shoes and I hate sweaty feet. I remember running around our neighborhood as a kid playing without shoes on. No matter how hard Mother tried, most of the time she couldn't get me to wear shoes unless we were leaving the house to go somewhere. My feet have always been tough. I could walk across the neighbor's shell driveway without flinching as a kid. I would cross the steaming asphalt street at the peak of mid-July without any pain.

I'm also not the kind of person that you should gift with slippers because I won't wear them unless I have to go outside in the dead of winter. None of this means that I am a backwoods redneck sort of girl, because I'm truly not. I am definitely a girl. I just don't like to have my feet restrained if they don't have to be. But understand that I do have enough sense to know when I should wear shoes for convention's sake.

I happened to marry a man who is the complete shoe opposite from me. E is the kind of guy that doesn't step out of the bed without his slippers on his feet. When he showers, his slippers await him patiently next to the tub. His feet are totally concealed in shoes until the moment he climbs into bed every night.

Here's E's daily shoe routine -
1. Sit on edge of bed and put slippers on
2. Take slippers off at edge of tub to shower
3. Put feet back into slippers as they are dried after the shower
4. Change into work shoes
5. Change into slippers upon arrival home
6. Sit on edge of bed and take slippers off

This is not natural, I tell you! Feet must be able to breathe. I'm not sure if I could accurately describe his feet as I've seen them so little in the past five years. I'll never understand how we can be so opposite when it comes to shoes. But I love him anyway. I guess that's part of what makes our marriage so interesting.