Oh, am I ever a bad influence. Is it good or bad that I’m not even trying to be one? So, I’ve spent the summer teaching at an art camp at the Doris (Gainesville’s community arts center), and each week a new crop of kids. Of course there are tons of questions and lots of disbelief that I don’t own shoes and live barefoot. Yes, and many times the kids are, through me, stripped of their silly inhibitions about going barefoot, and along with those, their shoes. It doesn’t take much. One week I had a crop of girls, lovely girls, so sweet, so creative… how I miss them. Adorable. What a rotten influence I was on them.

I had written about them earlier in a post about bare feet and teaching. There was a boy in the group, but the poor boy, surrounded by estrogen as he was, he didn’t stand a chance. Anyhow, I won’t repeat the story of that week, those kids, and our bare feet, look back for that entry. But that post of mine about them all going barefoot on account of me has an addendum.

Today I was talking with one of the other women at the Doris, and she said she had visited the parent’s of one of the girls I had corrupted with my wild barefoot ways. I assume it was one of the kids from my precious class, but it could have been one of the darling daughters of one of the others in the Doris clan. Anyhow, the mother had said to the kids, “OK, get your shoes on, we’re going out.” To which one of the girls said, “Uh uh, no, I want to go like Justine.”

I do wonder if she got her way or not. Hang on little girl, one day you can go barefoot all you want!

(While being vaguely off-topic, I’m gonna go ahead and post the other pic of my feet I took that kinda goes with the one above. My big nails are still a little orange from the iron oxide stain I got from wearing nail polish all the time… been letting them return to their original glory. Watch it with the nail polish girls! Gotta let those nails breathe!)