RayCF

Thanks, guys - your observations and advice are all well-taken.  I've got more to add to the conversation, but will have to post it later today.  RayCF

Hi, Everyone,

Let me say right off that I really appreciate the HHPlace, all of you whose exploits I've followed with great interest over the years and all of the things I've learned from you all.  Let me also say that I consider myself extremely fortunate in that I am married to a woman who knows all about my affinity for wearing high heels and is just fine with it.  I used to wear them as often as possible, and recently surpassed the pairs of flat shoes by pairs of heels.  Here is a question for you all, well, for those of you with kids: how did/do your children force you to modify when/where you wear your heeled shoes and boots?  As cool as my wife is about my choices in footwear, she is equally adamant about shielding our sons from possible blowback at school and in our community.  Our boys are not yet adolescents and we live in a conservative military town.  My wife/their mom doesn't want them to be subject to ridicule from members of their peer group if their families knew about me.  I see her point, but am very curious to know if any of you have dealt with a similar matter.  And, if so, how did you handle it?  Thank you all for your insights, comments, advice and recommendations.

Best regards,

RayCF

Hi Everyone, Over the years, I have posted a few times here but for the very large part just lurk. Mostly because I do not get to go in heels much anymore. I have two kids and while my wife is totally fine with me in heels she and I both don't want our kids to have to bear any brunt of their schoolmates because of it. So mostly I get to run around in heels when I travel for work. However, recently, I have had to move with my work away from my hometown and so now commute home on weekends. I have two pairs of boots with me in my rented room and here's the fun part. Last weekend, when I wrapped up on Thursday night, my wife asked me to come home then instead of waiting until Friday morning. So I said yeah, sure and put on this one pair I have, Tommy Hilfigers, black, with about a 4.5 inch heel and maybe a .5 inch platform, side zip. I have three housemates who don't yet know and can't yet gauge how they'd handle it. Anyway, I packed some clothes for the weekend and bagged up my laundry and headed for home. It's about a four hour drive from here, and there are a couple of places I'll stop along the way, for coffee, donut, soda, gas, etc. So I stopped at this Sheetz where I get off the major highway and onto two lane for the rest of the way home. It's pretty backward except that it's at the convergence of two interstates. So all the businesses that cater to travelers have sprung up to support all that traffic. Anyway, I walk (no, I *strut*) into this store and my heels click on the tile floor. The looks on everyone's faces were priceless... People sort of followed me around to watch the guy in high heels but tried to be discreet. There was a lady standing between me and the coffee urn I wanted so I had to say a cheery "Hi! Will you excuse me, please?" I think she put herself there on purpose... It was a lot of fun, and now I cannot wait until this weekend because if my plain black Tommys turned heads my bone Report Signature Howell boots, with 5+ inch heel and 3/4" platform could cause a riot. Which brings me to the other point of my post. I really love these boots, but have never been able to wear them because I guess they run a little small. 11 in ladies/9.5 in mens is the largest Report made, but depending on the shoe I take as large as a 12W/10M. So, reading some previous posts about stretching I bought a bottle of 90% isopropyl alcohol last night and thoroughly drenched my boots, put them on and left them on for hours. I even slept in them. Well, now they appear to have water marks on them. They're prominent, too. Are they permanent? Or is it possible that after 24 hours not all of the alcohol has evaporated? Comments, advice, suggestions are all welcome. The upside of this is that they now are just a little less uncomfortable. Lastly, is it possible to go right to a 5 inch heel? I wear all of my boots and shoes only sporadically, but when I have these opportunities I don't want to waste them on lower heels. If it was more commonly accepted, I'd wear nothing but high heels, I like them that much. That's all for now. Thanks! Ray

Hi, SandalCrazy27 - I meant to mention that I really dig clogs, too. The other day, on the trip to the mall I wrote about in the first reply, I spotted some in the shoe department at Belk's. I even pointed them out to my wife, who agreed that they were nice-looking shoes. Mostly, though, I like nearly any high-heeled, closed-toe shoe or boot. Yours are, IMO, a great choice. I even looked on the Payless site to see how much they cost. My first pair of heels after the Pleaser 8868 thighboots I bought before my wife and I met, were from Payless. Shafted, thanks for the encouragement; reading your posts, I suspect that you're quite ahead of me in your evolution as a heel wearer. I'm really lucky for my wife -- she grew up in Key West, FL, and so has seen pretty much everything. When we first started dating, I knew that, liking her a lot, I'd have to be out front about my thing for heels. When I brought it up, she said "Is that all? OMG, I thought you had a body in your closet or something!" So, from then on it was pretty smooth sailing. When we were expecting our son, I wasn't allowed to wear them to her OB appointments because in her words, "It's all about me. I don't want the attention focused on your shoes by all the girls at Dr.'s office!" She was only half-joking, though, ha! I used to wear them all the time while I commuted back and forth between South Florida and Jacksonville, where we now live together. My wife's concerns then were based on her fear that I might get jumped and beaten by troublemakers on the FL turnpike. Turned out her fears were rather groundless. I was getting gas once and had a nice conversation with a fellow behind me in the checkout line (the card reader at the pump was broken) and he looked like someone out of crowd at the monster truck show. I wore my J-Lo boots that day and not a word about them was spoken, even when it was obvious by the way I walked back to my car. So, I really do think most people are either too absorbed in their own things to notice, or if they do notice then they're simply inclined to mind their own business. However, if in the midst of dealing with someone anyway, like a cashier, and they are wearing something I like, I usually go out of my way to pay a compliment. But that's just me. Anymore, there seems to me to be a sense of anonymity out in the world. So long as you don't want to be bothered, it works fine. But if you find yourself in a jam and could use the attention of another, you might find yourself in even deeper trouble. Thoughts? Again, SandalCrazy27, nice going! It just gets easier from here. BTW, just call me Ray; CF are the initials of my middle and family names. RayCF

Hi, Everyone --

Once it occurs to you that most people aren't much concerned with what the next guy is doing, so long as it doesn't adversely affect them, it becomes easier and easier to go out in heels.

My wife, new baby (3 1/2 mos. old) and I went to the nearby mall in town so that she could return a pair of slacks she'd purchased a few weeks ago for our son's upcoming baptism. Until very recently, my wife, who is very cool with my wearing high heels and thinks I look great in some of them, didn't want me wearing them in public when she and the baby were around. But this past Saturday she allowed me to go all out. So I got to wear a sharp woolen turtleneck sweater, tight black jeans and my Tommy Hilfiger boots (about 4.5" heel/.5" platform.) I felt really, well, sexy, confident and attractive. And you know, if anybody noticed them they didn't question me about it. I'm not the least bit worried about being noticed any longer. The ironic thing about all of this is that for nearly all my life I was terrified about what other people thought of me. I was afraid of standing out because I was shy when I was younger and thought that standing out was an invitation for trouble. Now that I'm older, entering middle age, and I'm not too concerned about what people think of me, I have to keep my high heel wearing in a fair degree of check because my wife is concerned that my son will be embarassed in front of his friends and their parents if I one day wear my heels around them.

Anyway, in the meantime I get to wear them just about as often as I wish. I'd like to wear them to work, but probably will not. There is usually plenty of work to do, and I still get excited enough when I wear my high heels that it's all I can do not to fixate on them to some degree.

To everyone who's reading and hasn't yet gone out and about in their heels, come on in, the water's fine.

Warm regards, everyone!

RayCF