(“Today’s topic: shoes. But, first . . .”)

My profession permits me to study the human condition—at least as it exists among upwardly mobile, (mostly) Caucasian women in their mid twenties to mid sixties—the specific subset which proudly sports calluses on hands, inner knees, and seat bones. Even the most ardent of these must sometimes walk and rest. When they do, I have the opportunity to quiz them on matters of cultural interest. One survey inquiry: when was the last time you vacuumed? And the follow up: On average, how often do you vacuum?

The responses run the gamut—from a perplexed look and a softly mumbled, quizzical “Vacuum?” to “Well, of course, I do the barn aisle morning and evening” to, having been limited to counting only the household variety, an offhand “Oh, five times a day.” I found that last answer to be absolutely astonishing until I acknowledged the vastness of micro-managed, compulsive behavior this particular woman brought to the training of her horse. Upon further consideration, how could she not vacuum five times a day?

Another line of inquiry: Not counting sneakers, athletic wear, or flip flops, how many pairs of shoes do you own? As a guy, I can claim four pairs of serviceable shoes, two sets of which I have worn intermittently (weddings and funerals) for more than 40 years. My students routinely admit to a dozen or two pairs, the number occasionally topping 50 or 75. That got me thinking about my earliest remembered shoe buying experience—as a very small child in the early 1950s being taken to a Buster Brown’s in West Philadelphia, near 52nd and Market Streets by the El station. What made it so memorable (and a guy my age auditing as I told this story attested to its veracity) was the machine standing near the front of the store. Try on a prospective new pair, slip your feet into the base of the machine, and through the miracle of science and Cold War-inspired nuclear irradiation, see the greenish image of the bones of your toes wiggling inside. Do the shoes fit? Are your toes shriveling and falling off yet?

Well, that minor issue aside, the reason the topic came up was that I had invited a rider, now apprised of this process, to imagine applying it to observe from above the vertebrae in her horse’s neck articulating equally as she bent him in the shoulder-in. Like all old romantic comedies from a few generations ago, the story then turned naturally to train rides.

Picture the carriages of a long train as it negotiates a sweeping curve. The amount the train deflects between each car is equal—not (as it were) cranked to an extreme at the withers and then straight from there forward, not bent exaggeratedly in the front part and then straight and rigid farther back.

While pondering trains as they relate to horses’ top lines, it is also worth noting that a train standing in the station is shorter than it is when it pulls out onto the main line. Within each coupler between cars there is a certain amount of “play.” As the train’s engine stops, each car successively runs up against the one before it, and the entire column shortens. As the train departs, the engine elongates the distance from it to the first car. It, in turn, slightly stretches the space between itself and the next in line. And so on. In motion, the assembly is longer than at rest.

When you ride, you should try, likewise, to make the distance between each of your horse’s cervical vertebra greater. When they are crammed together, the horse is tense. When spread apart—even in collection—the horse is more pliable, supple, and free to move with more expression. [Editors note: With reference to the title above, Bill was informed that Imelda Marcos is not dead and that a “memorial blogpost” is inappropriate. He replies: “When deposed with her husband in 1986 from the head of the Philippine  government, the dictator’s wife most likely stated, ‘Without my 3000 pairs of shoes, I might as well be declared extinct and buried beneath the ground.’ She needs a memorial more than do you or I.” Mrs. Marcos, it should be noted, vehemently contradicted the revolutionaries’ claim, stating,

“I NEVER owned more than one thousand and thirty pairs of shoes at a time.”