Weird Gait

I'm on a shoe/foot theme right now, so just bear with me. As I walk the streets of the Chicago loop to and from my day job, I often notice the people walking around me and, lately, I've noticed that a lot of those people seem to have a weird gait. I see a lot of people around town who are either pigeon-toed, bowlegged, or just have some kind of odd gait. Most of the people I see with these issues are younger people. I assume this is because pediatricians now don't recommend that kids with gait problems use measures to correct their gait. Back in the old days, kids would wear those metal braces on their legs and feet to straighten things up, but I guess that's not happening now. Some people have such gait issues that I wonder how they manage to walk from one block to the next. I keep waiting for their feet to collide and send them falling to the ground. The next time I'm in the company of a doctor, I'm going to ask about these gait issues because I'm concerned and I'd like to know if it's true that kids aren't receiving the help they need to correct gait problems because the correction is frowned upon now.

I remember years ago when I was working my way through college as a secretary and a woman in our office had a daughter who was born with a twisted foot (or something). The woman's husband blamed HER for the kid's problems, like she sabotaged her baby in the womb or something. He was an idiot and a suspected wife-beater, so I wasn't surprised by his attempts to blame his wife for their child's foot problems. What an idiot. In any case, back then, the daughter was receiving some kind of medical procedures to correct her foot problem. I don't think she had to wear braces, but I think she had surgery or something. In any case, the problem was fixed. The kid wasn't left to limp around with a bum foot or left to have a weird gait.