Grade A Grocery Store Feet
Grocery Store Feet are great. Now moms and grandmoms may not think so, and with the rise of video games and the couch potato generation, most kids may not know what they are anymore, but growing up, I lived for grocery store feet. Grocery store feet are the result of a temporary or permanent hatred of shoes. I despise shoes. I despised them when I was little and I don’t care for them much now. I have fourteen pairs and counting of Crocs because they are the closest I can come to barefootin’ it without embarrassing Budge too terribly much.
Simply put, grocery store feet are the black, filth encrusted feet of someone who has gone all day (or week or month or since Memorial Day) without wearing shoes. Before everyone became mycophobic, it was common for people, children especially, to go barefooted in grocery stores. Once you hopped across the July heated asphalt of the parking lot, the tile floor of the Community Cash or Piggly Wiggly felt pretty good. Here’s the catch though; those floors might LOOK clean and shiny, but one lap around the store and the bottom of your feet would look like a roofer’s boot after an all-day tarring job.
That black crust never really came off when you washed either. It would only fade. The only real way to conquer grocery store feet was to start wearing those dreaded canvas Nikes with socks again. By October, the bottoms of my feet would once again be pink as a newborn’s bottom and I hated it.
Know what? I still hate shoes.
"Granny Beads and Grocery Store Feet" 
My new girlfriend told me look at how dirty her feet were and i told her she had gsf. Shes from the city so she just looked at me with questioning eyes and i told her what it meant. Shes 29. Im only 35 but i do remember walkin around the piggly wiggly with no shoes and my mama or grandmama picking with me about my stinky, dirty litte feet. I miss being 4yrs old.
Okay, that makes sense. I too like to go barefoot as much as possible.
Okay, I didn’t realize that I liked grocery store feet so much. It’s a sign of a good day, I agree.
Come to New Zealand if you like grocery store feet. Living in Canada, certain parts of the year one would lose his feet if they weren’t en-shoed, so it was strange to me to see so many people barefoot in grocery stores when I came to NZ.
OMG! This is great! Mama hated when I ran around barefooted in PaPa’s hardware store all day. Those were some nasty feet. I, too, hate wearing shoes, but alas, old age is taking its toll and the podiatrist insist on shoes. *sigh* What’s a girl to do?! And yes, I have kicked of my shoes and taken to barefootin’ around my library…but only after the kids have gone home.
My great-uncle Bob had a country store with a hardwood floor that was swept but never mopped or scrubbed. If Papa and I spent an afternoon there, my feet were in PRIME gsf condition !
As for the insistence on shoes, you have my sympathy, but I’m afraid I’ll be joining you before long. Age and gravity do get us all in the end 🙂
Finding your blog has been the best thing to happen to me all week. It is May in American education. I am wiping the tears from my eyes. I thought no one remembered this but me. What a great story. For just a little while I was ten again.
Thank you for such kind comments 🙂
No one knows what teachers go through in May, do they, lol? I hope all your memories are good ones!
Just to let everyone know how I feel on the matter, I do NOT condone the grocery store feet!
Honestly, Lisa, despite what Jimmy Buffett says on the matter, I can’t abide flip flops 🙂
The whole string between my toes thing just tears me out of my frame.
Wow this brought back memories! (And made me laugh really hard…) I spent my childhood barefoot as well and, truth be told, as much of my adult life as possible. Grocery store feet is stored in my memory banks next to glass bottle Cokes with peanuts, and riding in the back of pickup trucks! How do you feel about flip flops?
Thanks to Cathy N. for mentioning your blog on the SCASL listserv!