one small corner of the universe

Act I: First of all, I’m not really embarrassed by any of my shoes. My many many many shoes. I love shoes, and have been told, in fact, that I should be embarrassed to have so many. I’m not. That’s how it is with addiction. Only others can admit you have a problem.

But there does exist a pair of shoes in my collection that is embarrassing to other people, not because they are a strange color, or covered with odd markings, but because one of them is held together with hot glue.

My mom bought me these shoes at the L.L. Bean outlet in Freeport, Maine, and as you can see, I wore them, and wore them, and wore them. I wore them until the cork footbed sort of exploded out the back of the shoe. Did I stop wearing them? No, I did not. I fired up the hot glue gun and filled in the now gaping hole, and since hot glue is not really adhesive unless you use it on a surface that can absorb it, this repair only lasts for one good wear. Every time I want to wear these shoes, which is often, I have to get out the glue gun. I have no problem with this at all, but I can see how my companions might scoff at the ubiquitous string of hot glue hanging out of my sandal.

Act II: More embarrassing to me is a recent incident involving a shoe. It happened like this: I was getting ready for work on Thursday morning, and I was running late, as usual. I grabbed my shoes, and because I was in a hurry, I didn’t do “the shoe check.” Normally before I put on a pair of shoes I check them, you know, for spiders. I know I’m not the only person in the world who does this. Charlie Sheen admitted to it on “Ellen,” and I know for a fact my sister Megan does it, too. But on Thursday I forgot. I put on my right shoe. No problem. I put on my left shoe. All hell broke loose. Something was in there, and I just knew it was a spider the size of New Jersey, and it was biting me.

Some backstory. Several months ago I bought a package of pants/skirt hangers–the kind with the little clothespin things attached to the bottom–at the dollar store. Because they came from the dollar store they apparently could only hold half a pair of pants, and if I attempted to hang an entire pair of pants on one of them the clothespin things exploded. All the parts of the clothespin–the two plastic sides and the little metal clip holding them together, flew into the air, ricocheted off the ceiling, and landed in some unknown place in the bottom of my closet.

On Thursday morning the whereabouts of one of the plastic pieces was revealed. It was inside my shoe. As soon as the hard pointy side of it made contact with my heel I saw the spiders devouring my foot; I kicked the shoe off while simultaneously hurling myself backwards onto my bed and damn near fell off the other side in my enthusiasm to escape whatever was in my shoe.

Act III: These are the best shoes ever, hands down. Enough said.