Free Your Mind, Free Your Feet
Who is Teddy Wright?
Perhaps it is easier to ask who Teddy Wright is not. Teddy Wright is not a man who wears shoes. Ever. Well, weather permitting.
For the better part of the last three years, Theodore L. “Teddy” Wright ’04 has cast off his shoes, one of the more universal, though apparently needless, trappings of modern life. Teddy has become somewhat of a spectacle to many on campus as he walks from his room in Kirkland to class, takes his meals in the dining hall and even works out at the MAC—all without shoes.
On a recent Saturday, Teddy took the opportunity to explain, or rather to show me—a person more apt to wear two pairs of shoes while walking outdoors than to wear none at all—the joys of a life unburdened by footwear. By taking a walk in the shoes of a man who does not wear shoes, I was treated to a first-hand explication of the practical and philosophical underpinnings of the barefooted lifestyle: Wright’s Theory of Feet, if you will. The destination of our trek would be no less than what Teddy calls “the best foot place at Harvard,” and with it a better understanding of the inscrutable and mystical ways of the bare-of-foot.
The Path to Nirvana (of the feet)...
...apparently runs from the gates of Kirkland up along Dunster Street to Mass. Ave. and is peppered with broken glass and cigarette butts. As Teddy and I progressed barefootedly up Dunster Street, a once-pleasant thoroughfare that is a daunting gauntlet for the short-of-shoe, he elaborated on his lack of footwear.
“It’s all about comfort,” proclaimed Teddy.
Anyone who has ever felt the cool tug of uncut grass or the dewy kiss of morning earth between their toes may appreciate what Teddy means. Then again, anyone who has ever been forced into an improvised cha-cha routine by the scorching lash of steaming asphalt on their naked feet may not.
Teddy’s shoeless ways no doubt conjure memories of some of the unsavory turf we all have had to tread at one time or another in our daily travels. Whether traversing a common room carpet in the aftermath of a 21st birthday party, the floor of any men’s bathroom—especially the perimeter of the toilet also known as the margin of error—or pits of flaming coals and boiling tar, one’s shoes are generally a comforting presence. Teddy, however, would disagree.
For Teddy, the dangers lurking within one’s shoes are far more daunting than those just outside. In fact, while many people naively refer to foot coverings as “shoes,” Teddy, unmoved by the relentless pro-shoe propaganda disseminated by the footwear industry, prefers to refer to them as “leather coffins.”
“Shoes force your little pinky toe under your other toes,” Teddy bemoaned. “It’s just terrible.”
With that unnerving remark, my eyes strained towards the ground to assess whether or not my long-neglected pinky toes had, as Teddy predicted, been rendered gimpy and disfigured from years spent under the yoke of New Balances. Pointing to his own feet, Teddy illustrated the sort of vigorous, proud and gloriously unmarred pinky toes that could flourish in the absence of shoes. I again peered downward in an effort to survey the damage wrought by 20 years of intense shoe dependency and I found only two withered stubs masquerading as pinky toes. They looked less like natural appendages and more like unwanted souvenirs from a childhood spent living far too close to a radioactive dump. As we crossed Harvard Yard, I made great pains to shield the two little black sheep of my family of toes from the sight of tourists, so as not to disabuse them of whatever idealized tales they may have heard about the worthiness of Harvard feet.
Paradise Found
Rounding Annenberg with a sense of purpose, Teddy led me around to Kirkland Street and on to William James Hall. As we neared William James, it became apparent that this edifice was our final destination.
“I love the feel of marble against my feet,” Teddy sighed as he hoisted himself atop a marble bench at the foot of William James. The cool face of the marble bench did have a soothing, almost numbing property. But perhaps this was the result of the tiny pebble that had become lodged in my foot back in Harvard Yard and was slowly compressing a nerve ending.
Standing barefoot next to Teddy on that bench, I reflected on something Teddy said earlier in the day. In a surprising demonstration of the practical utility of philosophy as a field of study, Teddy, a joint concentrator in Afro-American studies and philosophy, told me the enlightened reasons why he never yields to societal pressures to walk his bare feet to the mall, buy himself a pair of shoes and put them on.
“Sort of like Descartes said, there is a point in life where you realize that so many customs are based on bullshit assumptions because so many assumptions are based on uncertainties,” he said. I didn’t quite get it, but I knew it was good.
Paradise Left
Walking up Quincy Street, I asked Teddy when, if ever, he wore shoes. Not one to chance hypothermia, Teddy slips on the “leather coffins” when the temperature dips below 50° Fahrenheit. Teddy has, however, contemplated employing modern technology in a bid to keep himself barefooted 365 days a year. Thus far, Teddy reports that he has failed in his efforts to engineer a sort of “furry” foot mitten that could insulate and permit ample foot-to-earth contact.
“I also thought about using bear lard,” Teddy said, “but I’m a vegetarian.” (Sadly, in spite of tofurkey’s triumphant emergence as the cultural bridge between vegetarians and the rest of mankind, the creative minds at the forefront of vegetarian substitutes have yet to come up with a tofu-based option to satisfy a vegetarian’s occasional need for bear lard.)
Upon reentering Harvard Square, Teddy explained that the Square is an urban utopia for the unshoed. The classical sidewalk construction technique of using individual red bricks oriented side-by-side, which is so common in and around the Square, leaves tiny gaps that serve as useful repositories for meddlesome glass, rocks and rusty nails that could spoil an otherwise lovely barefooted jaunt.
Like any road that one must tread alone, and without shoes, the path Teddy has traveled has not always been paved with red bricks. “Do I step on glass occasionally?” Teddy said. “Sure.” But he assured me that the process of extricating sharp objects is simple and straight-forward...much as surgical procedures were in the Dark Ages.
“Well,” began Teddy, “you just have to get a pair of tweezers, pick the skin around a bit, dig in [the wound] a little, sort of scrape at it and the glass eventually comes loose.” Oh, yes, it’s that simple.
In addition to outpatient surgery, Teddy’s daily foot-care regimen also includes a nightly foot-scrubbing. Teddy exclusively endorses antibacterial Dial Soap for all pedi-hygienical needs. Finally, each foot gets massaged down with Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion before getting put to bed.
Despite Teddy’s somewhat dubious accounts of his own irreproachable foot hygiene—no, really, once you have stepped barefoot on one piece of gooey street gum, you’ve stepped on them all—the benefits of life without shoes seemed pretty compelling by the end of our walk together.
“On any given day,” noted Teddy, “my feet just smell better than the feet of someone who wears shoes.” So now only one question remained. Could I ever muster the inner fortitude to defy convention, as Teddy does every day? Could I challenge the cultural norms of most of the human race? Well...no.