Footfall

Humans walk on their back legs.  They call their front legs ‘arms’.  The whole process of standing up that way to locomote is a bit strange unless you are constantly keeping your head above water or always looking over tall hedges.  Even meercats – that stand up for a better view of the countryside – run on 4 legs when the countryside threatens to consume them.

Humans also have strange feet.  They walk on their whole foot rather than just their toes.  My heels never touch the ground unless I sit down.  Human heels take a hammering.  If you sit and watch walking human feet for a while (especially in places where there are lots of them walking ‘purposefully’) you can develop a general pattern for human striding – heel strike, roll, push off from toes.

Humans however enclose their feet in sort of bucket things they call shoes (which are handy containers for live mice by the way), held together with string (called shoe-laces which used to be fun to attack, but I have grown out of that silly pastime).  This business of wearing shoes adds to the entertainment level of studying walking human feet.

I can watch humans walking from my windowsill.

Some humans go heel strike roll, heel strike roll, hitting first with the very back corner of their heels….clonk swoop, clonk swoop.  Some curl their toes upward as they lift their foot and their shoe makes an upward curve as it heads for the next clonkswoop.  Other humans hit the floor with the bottom of their heel, or leave out the roll – as in smack SLAP – then engage a hinge  at the toes to lift the back part and repeat: smackslap creeeeak, smackslap creeeeak.  A very few display a toe-walking gait where the front of the foot hits first, but walking like that tends to make them look like a target.

A few humans (and it tends to be men) add a sort of bounce before they push off with their toes, as if their whole body is trying to go airborne before they take the next step: smackswoop boing, smackswoop boing.

A remarkable number of humans have an uneven gait – stride with one leg, a slightly shorter stride with the other.  It is a surprise they don't go around in circles.  A few (and it tends to be women) walk carefully, gingerly even, as though their shoes hurt them or they are afraid of their heels slipping.  Some teeter totter, adding a few side to side wobbles to each stride to test the mettle of their ankles.  They are more clop wobble, clop wobble.  

One guy proceeding along on a pair of trotters that looked like two small flatbottomed barges, walked as if they were flat bottomed barges – steps that were more sliding or gliding than smackswoop, a sort of swoosh ending with the whole shoe sole appearing to make floor contact in one simultaneous landing (or berthing).

Then there are the marchers - lift lower, lift lower, 

and the scufflers – schloopdrag, schloopdrag, 

the shufflers - schweer schweer, 

the leg-flickers - clomp kick clomp kick. 

and the 'I'm late for my bus' sprinters....

Aaaaand the loose-shoelacers doing swishflick swishflick....

Swishflick

Swiiiish flick

Swish.....

....flick 

I'm over shoelaces.

Really.

I am.

Over it.

FFF link here