To avoid wearing orthopedic shoes.

Do you see the problem here?  How about here?     Certainly not here!
           

Yup, those are my little pigeon-toed legs in the first picture. When we lived in Great Bend, Kansas, Mom took my little pigeon-toed legs to an orthopedic doctor to see what he could do about them. He looked me over and had me walk back and forth across the examination room. Then he told my mom to walk across the room. “Um hum,” he said, “She got that from you, Mom.”

As Mom’s puzzled expression changed to realization, you could hear the indignation in her voice as she replied, “Well, I’ve never had a problem with my legs!”

And you can see, as we are pointing out in that last picture, Mom did not have a problem with her legs.

The doctor stuck by his professional opinion and did his best to explain that the problem resided in our knees… the lower leg bone turned in at the joint. (That middle picture is of Mom’s little girl legs.) Mom wasn’t buying her part in this, I could tell, but she didn’t argue. The good doc pulled out the ugliest, clunky, oxford-style brown shoes you would never want to wear and told me these would be mine…. unless I followed his instructions.

I was to practice walking on a board every day until my return visit and if I could walk with my feet pointing straight ahead when I came back to see him, I could avoid those ugly shoes.

Dad (Jim) went to the lumber yard and bought me my own 6-foot piece of lumber. He laid it in an open space in the basement and I walked back and forth on that board every day because there was no way I would be caught dead in those shoes.