Click your heels
It’s getting cold here, and I need closed shoes, as I remember from last year how frostbite feels. I decide to buy trainers. They are warm; they are practical; they look funky with jeans.
I go trainer shopping. Shop after shop offers me a dreary selection of running shoes with absolutely no funk at all. I do find one pair that I quite like, but they cost N$900, which constitutes a third of my monthly wage, and they really aren’t that exciting. Also, they make my ankles look weird.
I am starting to despair, and the shop assistants give my ancient and grubby N$10 plastic flip flops the hairy eyeball every time I ask try on a pair of shoes, as if it’s insufferable presumption to present myself in inferior footwear when shopping for N$900 trainers.
Feeling disgruntled, I decide to try one more shop. I go in and instantly my eyes alight on a pair of brown wedge heeled shoes with flowers stitched onto them. I turn within seconds from grumpy, slobby volunteer with cold feet to ditzy blonde as the phrase “OMG! Cute shoes!†springs unbidden into my brain.
I look around furtively to check that no-one’s noticed the embarrassing, if only momentary, Jekyll/Hide transformation. No-one appears filled with horror, so I try on the shoes.
Three minutes later, I leave the shop, shoe box under one arm. I wonder what has happened to me – I used to be a ‘one pair for every occasion’ girl. Now I’m having to commission a walk-in wardrobe to house all the fucking girly [gorgeous] shoes [which I love].
I think I will go to the doctor.
May 29th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Being a Ditzy Blond myself I can understand the shoe fetish! I have a closet full, I was thinking just the other day I needed to “thin” them out a bit, they are starting to overwhelm the entire closet. Can I help you with a pair of shoes??? I buy all of mine off of Zappos.com. Now i don’t know if they will ship to you or not, they have free shipping and free returns. But let me know I can ship to you from here. Only too glad to help a fellow shoe hound!
May 29th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Kathleen, thanks for the offer! However, I can’t buy shoes off the internet - I’m very lucky that shoes here are cheap, but even then they’re a little beyond my means. I just haven’t got the money to start paying proper prices.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
As a licensed physician, I don’t see a single problem with your growing shoe collection. (Or with mine for that matter.) Carry on. As you were.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Phew! Thanks! It’s good to know I am not fatally afflicted.