My mother used to tell the story about when I was very young having to keep me “on a leash”, as she would call the safety harness.  She said that she learned her lesson after one day putting me on the swing and sliding the safety bar down in front of me, and giving the swing a push.  After a few pushes on the swing, it came back empty, as I had lifted the bar and jumped free.  I ran and did not come back when she called, so I was never taken for a walk again without my “leash”.  Learning early on how quick they can be, when my children were small, I also used the harness, calling to them in a high pitched voice like that dog trainer would as we would begin, “Walkies.”
When I was young, I remember my mother putting my shoes on me and, as soon as I would get out of her sight, off they went.  I would hide them under the porch and run around barefoot for as long as I could.  Apparently, “I could” for a very long time, as it’s been a great many years, and I never where shoes unless I absolutely have to…and I rarely ever have to.  I used to go to school barefoot in the warmer weather, wearing my jeans long enough to hide my secret, and carrying a broken pair of sandals in my over-sized handbag should I be found out and questioned.  I’m not a little kid anymore, nor am I a teenager, and my mother’s hands are coming out of my sleeves more and more lately, but I still avoid shoes like the plague.  Of course, those in the work place were not as easily duped as a crowded school, but I sought out offices where stocking feet were overlooked as long as I did what I was hired to do, no one much cared what I wore while doing it, regardless of what they might have been saying behind my back — and there is always someone saying something.