Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make:
Vibram FiveFingers are addictive.
Most of us already know that. For the rest of you who haven’t found out, just wait. You’ll see. As a public service, here are just a few signs and symptoms to see if you or your friends/family are suffering from this not-so-terrible affliction:
You find yourself hanging out with strange people in weird places, possibly acting strangely.
After purchasing your FiveFingers, you find yourself hanging out with a different sort of crowd. Suddenly you find yourself hanging around other people wearing funny-looking shoes or possibly even no shoes at all, doing out of character things like hitting the trail instead of the bar, or even just running down the street quite possibly with a smile on your face. Hanging around stores selling strange apparati used for fitness/outdoor activities may become quite common. In some cases, contagious laughter may spontaneously erupt from yourself or others while wearing VFF’s. Generally this is caused by curious onlookers, but can come from the wearer as it’s usually difficult to take yourself too seriously when wearing shoes with individual toe pockets.
You start speaking incoherently to “normal” people.
You may will find yourself babbling to perfect strangers about the joys and benefits of barefooting/minimalist shoes. We’ve all seen the video, haven’t we? I think that’s all I need to say about that.
Lack of money due to feeding said addiction.
Just recently, while pondering buying yet another pair of FiveFingers (or maybe two. See? It really is a problem), I began tallying up the amount I’ve spent recently on minimalist shoes. Three pair of VFF’s (two for me, one for the wife), and one pair of Luna Sandals all purchased in less than a year has added up to be a fair chunk of change. That’s not to mention a few other non-FiveFinger related pairs I’ve bought in my head (here and possibly here). Since I used to be a wear ‘em-into-the-ground-before-even-thinking-of-buying-a-new-pair kind of guy, this has put me into a bit of a quandary.
Related issue: VFF’s are a gateway drug.
Wearing of Vibram FiveFingers has been attributed to exploring other minimalist footwear, ditching your footwear completely, spending less time in front of the tv, and possibly even *enjoying* fresh air and the out of doors. Tread carefully if entering the world of FiveFingers, for it is a slippery slope (see what I did there?) from which you’ll [hopefully] never return. You’ll even find yourself pressuring friends and family members to jump on the bandwagon. I for one, greatly encourage this, mostly to keep me from being the only weirdo in the area with the goofy toe shoes on.
What else should we “warn” our friends and family about when starting to wear FiveFingers? Let us know in the comments!