I wear sandals. I like to wear sandals, summer and winter. I used to have cold feet–back in my twenties, thirties, and forties. Then menopause hit, and my feet haven’t been cold since.

When we were in Seattle this past winter, twice I was stopped by strangers on the street who felt compelled to ask me, “Aren’t your feet cold?”

Well, no, they’re not. That’s the short answer, but I’ve puzzled about why they’re asking the question in the first place. Are they concerned, for instance, that my wearing sandals in the winter is an indication of some kind of mental instability or impairment? Maybe they’re planning on directing me to the nearest mental health facility for an evaluation. Maybe they think I’m hoping someone will give me a gift certificate to Zappos. Or perhaps they’re afraid that I spend my spare time standing on street corners panhandling with a cardboard sign that says, “Will work for shoes!”

Most likely, however, they’re simply making a fashion statement and voicing their head-shaking disapproval of my choice of foot wear.

In an earlier posting, I wrote about how, in South Dakota, my great grandmother, Grandma Madsen had a penchant for walking back and forth to her outhouse barefoot in the snow. Like me, Grandma Madsen was six feet tall, and I still believe that she walked barefoot in the snow to keep from wrecking her shoes. I’m sure ladies size twelve shoes were very hard to come by back then. DNA being what it is, I also suspect that, at a certain age, Grandma Madsen’s feet stopped being cold, the same way mine did. So may be I should tell my questioners that I’m just channeling my great grandmother.

But still, what compels them to ask?

At a certain point in one’s life, some people–yours truly included–come to the inevitable conclusion that wearing tank tops or sleeveless blouses is no longer in their best interests. Unfortunately there are other people who never arrive at that conclusion even though they should. That doesn’t give me the right to go up to one of them in public and say, “Aren’t your arms too floppy for that tank top?” That would be a surefire invitation to lose a front tooth or two, because some of those tank top ladies appear to be pretty tough cookies.

When people asked my mother, a good Congregationalist, why she had seven children, she invariably launched off in a detailed explanation of which failed birth control device each of us was. I doubt any of her victims were dumb enough to ask someone else that question.

Someone wrote to me a few years ago and asked me where a character named Fat Crack got his name. I wrote back and told him to think of the back side of any plumber he had ever seen. My answer evidently offended him because he responded with a three word reply: TOO MUCH INFORMATION! Excuse me, where do people think nick names come from? And, furthermore, if you don’t want a straight answer, then don’t ASK!

At this very moment, I have a very well dressed plumber outside installing a sand filter on the water pipe from our well. He happens to be a plumber who wears a freshly laundered uniform with a tucked in shirt and a belt fastened neatly around his waist. But even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t think of mentioning to him or to any other plumber or even to the occasional teenager, “Aren’t your low-riders riding a little too low?”

In the late seventies while living in Bisbee and working in the insurance business, I slipped on some gravel, slid under a parked car, and broke my ankle. (Come to think of it, one of the characters in the upcoming Remains of Innocence has the same kind of incident that occurs on the same street. Authors are supposed to write what they know, right?)

The seventies may be only dim memory for a lot of us, but those were the days when ladies’ business attire included heels, panty hose, blazers, skirts, and blouses. Once I was in a cast, I was unable to handle the thought of going to work wearing a suit with a bare knee sticking out above the plaster, so I took action. I found a pair of previously damaged pantyhose and cut the leg off a few inches above the knee. (There were always a few pairs of panty hose with runners in them hanging around in my stocking drawer.) First I put on the pantyhose and then stuffed the cut off part of the stocking into the top of my cast. Next, after whacking the foot piece down to a few inches, I stuffed the toe part over my toes and into the bottom of my cast. Voila–there I was properly dressed in stockings and a cast!

It takes about six weeks for a broken ankle to heal. In that time, any number of people–the same kind of people as my recent sandal inquisitors–asked me how did I get those pantyhose on? Depending on my mood at the time, I told them either, “I put them on over my head,” or “I was wearing them at the time I broke my ankle.” Remembering the looks of consternation on their faces still makes me smile, all these years later.

So I’m going to take a lesson from my own darned self–from that pantyhose wearing lady from way back when, the one who may have had cold feet but who also had a sense of humor. I’m not going to growl at the fashion police and say, “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” Instead, I’m going to look down at my feet in apparent astonishment and say, “I’m wearing sandals? Really? I never noticed!”

I have a son and a pair of granddaughters who, like me, are more than six feet. I’m going to suggest they give the same kind of treatment to the people who insist on asking how tall they are: “I’m tall? Really? I never noticed.”

Let the questioners put THAT in their pipes and smoke it.

The final thing I have to say about those questions–they are R-U-D-E. Not unlike saying to a pregnant woman who is well aware of her appearance, “You’re so big. Are you expecting twins?”

The real answer, to a question like that is this: “It’s none of your business.” Because it isn’t.

So endeth the rant for the day!