Booze and Shoes

In a world of women’s competitive shoe shopping, I am a fat calved dummy.

Katie and I walked into a small room pulsing with affluent young women hoped up on champagne and mushroom tartlets, devouring eyefuls of shoes. The walls were striped in satin; at any moment I would not have been surprised if some greater power peeled the lid from the elegant shoebox we found ourselves in.

We grabbed our complimentary glass of champagne, hugging the corners of the room, scared to swim with the sharks until the bubbles did their trick. With our glasses half empty, we skimmed past the walls admiring pairs as they glittered, shined, laced, pointed and pulled at us, begging to be held, to be worn. We passed quickly commenting in hushed whispers and found the least intimidating sales man in a pink polo to grab the most intimidating pair of shoes/boots in the room. I tried on a pair of high heeled boots that would have made me feel delightfully wicked if they were able to slip past my unusually shaped calves. My calf muscle sit low on my leg, like my father's, making nearly impossible to feel delicate in boots or fit into delicate boots. I thought our kind-eyed sales man was going to cry as he rambled through a myriad of reasons the boots didn’t fit except the obvious one. I appreciated his efforts and made some self-deprecating jokes and moved on to a shorter boot, with the same devastating results.
The salesman responded: “oooooooooh, so sad.”
To which I replied: “It’s ok. I know my place.”
Truth be told, I was pleased they didn’t fit; I had a sound reason for not making a purchase that would have sent my finances in a downward spiral for a very, very long time.

Katie tried on a pair of pink satin low heeled shoes with a wide black ribbon crossed in the front. They increased the net worth of her feet like heaven wrapped packages. We wisely put the shoes back and devised our escape plan.

We looked once again around the room as the frenzy mounted boxes upon boxes. Women peeled off fancy shoes, throwing on new ones, seeing how they feel in conversation. As we looked at these women lounging in $300 dollar shoes, our pretend “fancy” was wearing thin quick. We exited and walked cross town into a two for one happy hour, where we belonged.

What would it be like to have so much money you could command a fancy shoe store?
I will never know.