Oh, the Shoe-manity!

Anyone who sees me on a regular basis knows that I have a certain fondness, a penchant if you will, for high heels.

Actually, that’s probably an understatement: I am a shoe whore. If they’re pointy enough to cause me pain or high enough to add four inches to my physique, then I will buy them in every color available. I figure that at some point later in life, I will have to cut my feet off because I’ve been teetering around in ill-advised fashion whims for thirty, forty years, but until that day, I WILL get my shoe on.

I headed into the grocery store just a few days ago to pick up a few necessities (i.e. a bottle of shiraz and a bouquet of Gerbera daisies), feeling kind of fly. I had on my new wool pea coat (Macy’s – half-off!) and my favorite pair of black peep-toe stilettos. I say favorite pair because, let’s be honest, I have many.

This particular pair has been so well-loved that they are in fair need of a shine (which my company offers for free with some regularity, but in addition to being a shoe whore, and I am also a forgetfulness whore) and the heels themselves have been worn down so that the metal spikes within are exposed. This makes me striding down the cement floors at work sound a bit like I’m walking around on knife points. Which I almost never am.

As I headed in through the first set of automatic doors at my local market, I shook the rain out of my hair, and then became caught up in peeling my hair out of my lip gloss. As I was distracted by all this activity, I suddenly became aware of a pain in my right ankle. Interesting, I thought. Let’s see what the trouble is down there.

Upon further inspection, it became clear that my foot (used to walking on a regular basis) was minding its own business and hustling into the grocery store, while my shoe, on the other hand, had slightly different ideas. Ideas that involved becoming wedged into the waffle-pattern black rubber mat in the market’s vestibule.

There I stood, in between the two sets of automatic doors, trying vainly to daintily free my heel without losing my tenuous grasp on dignity. This proved to be somewhat difficult. As my struggling increased, the infrared eye of the doors into the store caught sight of me and began trying to shoo me inside by rapidly opening and closing.

Schomp. Schomp.

As the doors were inches from my face, this made bending over difficult, unless I was willing to be decapitated in order to free my foot, which seemed counterproductive.

Schomp. Schomp.

Finally, after it became clear that it was either swallow my pride or take up a new residence at 101 Waffle Mat Avenue, I was forced to set my purse down, take my foot out of my shoe, then reach down and wrench my heel out of the flooring, careful to avoid the ever lively doors and the eyes of passers-by, some of whom actually walked through the doors and past me, bestowing upon me all-too-relevant "what a weirdo" glances.

And then I headed into the store and promptly slipped in a puddle right in front of the display of canned corn.

I am SUCH a catch.