I like shoes

Ever since I was a child I had this thing for shoes. I know it is common knowledge that women love shoes, but I loved them even as a little girl. I remember trying to wear my neighbors shoes. They always had the latest styles and I got stuck with the cheap kinds so I would try to wear their hand-me-downs. The problem was that they had smaller feet than I did so when they were handing their shoes down to me I had to fold my toes in half to wear them. There were so many sacrifices that I made to make my feet look good–until my mom found out.

Most of my most vivid memories are about shoes. One time my mom managed to buy a beautiful pair of brown disco boots that I wanted for Christmas. I loved those boots and it killed me to walk out of the store without them, however, my mom had tricked me and had bought them and I can still remember opening that box on Christmas morning. The other special thing about those boots was that I have a picture of myself in my boots posing with my late dad when he had won a teaching award.

I remember when I was probably around 8 or 9 and my sister asked me to walk to the bakery and buy her a chocolate éclair (life was different back then and it was safe for me to walk to the store at that age. I wouldn’t even think of sending my daughter alone to the store now.) This was actually a frequent request from my sister. She would get these cravings and I knew how important that éclair was to her. So anyway, I took her money for the éclair and walked to the bakery. When I got to the bakery the lady told me they were out of éclairs. So I turned around and walked out of the bakery and into the corner store. I never should have walked into the corner store because there before my eyes were the most exquisite plastic high heeled shoes I had ever seen. All I could do was imagine putting those “glass slippers” on my feet. Without thinking, I bought the plastic shoes.

I dragged my feet home wondering how I was going to explain to my sister that her mouthwatering éclair had turned into a pair of cute plastic heels. I hadn’t thought of that when I bought them. As I slowly walked up the stairs to my home my sister dashed out of the house and grabbed the bag…of shoes. I will never forget the look on her face when she saw my darling shoes. She was not happy. I tried to explain that the bakery was out of éclairs, and needed to use the money, but no explanation satisfied her. So I went into the house and opened the package to put on my heels. I walked around the house a few times and twirled and then the heel broke and I learned to never take my sister’s chocolate money and spend it on plastic shoes. I do spend my money on occasional pair of cute shoes but I avoid the plastic ones now.