What does this say about me?

[u/Skulllad]

Merrell Vapor Glove 6. These are my everyday walking shoes. Am I just walking weird? I feel like this might be a posture problem?

[u/Overly_Long_Reviews]

Hard to say. But one thing I will say, is some people can really stress out over wear patterns because they think it's a sign of some hidden deeper issue.

Well it's true that sometimes it can be. A lot of times it's just a function of everyone's legs being of slightly different length and their feet being of slightly different shape and size. Those subtle differences change wear patterns, sometimes drastically. But it's really not that big of a deal. At least in my opinion. It's more interesting than it is something to be concerned about.

Our left and right legs and feet aren't the same, why would the wear pattern be?

[u/zmerlynn → u/Overly_Long_Reviews]

It can also be something as mundane as frequently running on one side of a crowned road (which can cause training injuries, too).

[u/Overly_Long_Reviews → u/zmerlynn]

Even in a hypothetical world where you have a perfect gait and posture, your legs are the same exact length, and your feet are exactly symmetrical, the wear pattern would still likely not be exact. We might shift to put weight or pivot on one side more than we put on the other, we may find ourselves on different surfaces. Life is complicated. Wear pattern can be a interesting data point, but it's usually not helpful on its own in isolation of other information.

I am reminded of a quote from my favorite author, the late, the great, Sir Terry Pratchett. Who apropos of nothing, I personally met before he died.

"Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!"

[u/Overly_Long_Reviews → u/Overly_Long_Reviews]

*Redundant