Everyone knows the expression, “Walk a mile in my shoes.”

I heard someone say it just the other day, and it got me to thinking about the shoes I have worn in my lifetime. Women wear many shoes. They tend to represent what we do, where we are going, and for many women, how we are getting there.

It also made me think about what my mother has always said, “Just make sure that when I die, you bury me with my slippers on. I want to be comfortable in heaven.” (she waitressed for many years to keep a roof over our heads, and was a bookkeeper for her second job). Her feet always hurt at the end of the day.

Finally, it made me think about the shoes that men wear; shoes that women have judged them by, literally and figuratively. But let us forget about ‘fashion’ for a moment, and look at some of the particular footwear of many of our men.

When women talk about shoes, I don’t suppose a lot of them have these images in mind. While they are buying a pair of the latest fashionable boots from the hottest ‘designer of the moment’, many families are affected and grieving for the men who have donned, and lost life and limb, in his particular footwear.

That alone makes me think about the men that still can wear their boots or shoes, only now they never really touch the ground because of their newest method of transportation. I am talking about the ones that managed to survive wearing those shoes; the ones that came home unable to walk in them.

When I hear some woman telling me how shitty her life is because she didn’t end up with the ‘perfect man’ or the lifestyle she always envisioned for herself– I think of these men that went to war and came home in this condition– with an attitude that far betters any expectations that any of us pity-pot civilians could ever hope to have for ourselves in our normal whiny-crying-nit-picking lives.

Hearing women whine always leads me to other places, like a domino effect; wondering what complaints feminists are currently screaming about. I wonder if any of these men are their sons, brothers, fathers, or uncles….and have they gone home to those women in this condition, and are they being abused by the self-righteous indignation of a woman that could never understand what is expected of men, or how often they rose to the occasion without question.

I would love for these women to walk a mile in any one of their shoes.

Yes, that was sarcasm – for women who think they can do what men do, or think they have sacrificed what men have sacrificed for us. Since the time men stood guard, like living, breathing barriers between women and children and something that might tear them to shreds and eat them; to now, today, when answering the call of duty and laying everything on the line for a small paycheck that will put food on the table.

Yes, that was sarcasm. Well-deserved sarcasm.