Shoes and the Issues With Them

The idea of "shoes" seems nowadays, to be one of those things so very "women's turf"-like, so iconically "female love and concern" they almost defy the whole gender. A woman and her shoes are like a man and his sports, a man and his beer, a man and his buddies. If anyone were to ask a woman about how many shoes does she have, she would probably answer "Not enough". There were a man has from two to five pairs of shoes, a woman owns at least 20, with no limit to the number she might end up having at one point of her life or the other. Then, like any male-brained woman, I didn't have that many shoes (around 26 pairs) but above all, I didn't think much of them. Actually, most of my shoes usually tended to fall into that unsightly "uncared" type. I just wasn't that much interested in them. I didn't spend hours shopping for them, they didn't seduce me, and I didn't dress for them, but I simply put them on. Recently, however, something terrible happened to me.

I was happily picking my clothes for the next day, thing I do every night before a working day, in order to save myself the pain of fighting with my closet for clothes to wear. I put up a nice ensable and the finishing touch was to wear to it some black shoes. That was simple, because I happen to have an overstaffing of black shoes. However, as I sat on the floor of my room, before my open closet, shoe after shoe emerged from the boxes, some so old and dusty I even forgot they existed, but all of them were broken. Broken soles, worn off heels, holed soles, ripped, worn, battered noses and straps.

I felt so hopeless! Was I going to be forced to wear pink, green, brown or red shoes because I had no black shoes left? My outfit simply couldn't have gone with other shoes. They had to be black. I gathered a plastic bag and started throwing away all the broken shoes cheking them before, saving that one or two pairs that maybe could be saved by a shoemaker miracle.

It was Monday night. I had to throw away five pairs of black shoes. The onslaught continued yesterday with four more pairs. Another one put on hold, but it seems it will meet the depths of a wasteland soon.

I'm not really up to spending on shoes, as I have had a few "major" expenses recently, and I want to start cutting back, saving and paying out debts, but this is an emergency, a real one. Today I have only 3 pairs of black shoes, and soemthing around 12 to 16 pairs of shoes in total, including three pairs of boots that need to be fixed and other three pairs of shoes that also need an intervention to survive. So, left out of choices, I went yesterday to Best Brands, a shoestore known for good shoes, good styles and good prices. Well, first of all, I saw three amazing pairs I simply had-to-have. The prices ranged from $3 to no more than $15. A bargain? You bet! Well, I believed that would solve all my problems.

Yeah, it would have. Two beautiful, stylish pumps I could use at the office, and one pair of short boots (or whatever they call them, they reach up to the ankle) simply perfect to wear with pants. And they were in 7, my size. Oh well, I'm a 7- 7 1/2, but 7 usually is fine. Yes, the key word is "usually". I don't know where do they do the shoes, but those 7s looked on me like Daisy's shoes. I put on the shoes and I still could stick two-three fingers in the gap. I tried the 6s, the 5s... and there were no 4s. Needless to say, I walked out without any shoes.

Today I'll give it another shot, and hopefully this time the price will be right, the style will be right, and for the love of Pete, make the size right too!!!