The Irony of Shoes
Every once in awhile, when I happen to glance down at my shoes, I usually notice one thing:
My shoes do not look like the shoes of a manager.
Now, while my main concern in attire is comfort and function, I do occasionally care what other people think about me. I care the most when someone looks at me like a little girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Funky flip-flops do not in any way help your case when you are trying to explain that you have a degree in graphic design to back up your insistence that a picture taken on a camera phone is not actually high enough quality to enlarge to a 4′ x 8′ banner.
(Not that I wear the flip-flops every day, of course. I usually put on a comfy pair of New Balance tennis shoes. They’re fairly plain and do not, at least, take away from my credibility. But it seems like the days I choose to wear flip-flops are the days I need that credibility the most.)
So I decided to do something about my problem. Being a logical person, I analyzed why I like the flip-flops so much — they keep my feet cooler than sneakers, and they’re a pretty shade of blue — and then decided to seek out reasonably comfortable sandals that look a bit more, well, grown-up.
A search at the nearest Payless on my lunch break found the right sandals, but alas, they only had my size in black. For some reason the contrasting beige stitching made them look really cheap to me. So I decided to set out on a quest to find the right size in the much more tasteful brown.
Alas, I was also destined to find a pair of sneakers that stole my heart.
These cute little clearance shoes — clearance shoes being one of the reasons, in fact, that I do not go shoe shopping more than twice a year — grabbed my attention immediately. I am still an ’80s child at heart, and this is exactly the kind of shoes I would have begged, borrowed and stolen (well, not really, but I didn’t come up with the expression) to get in about the sixth grade. I had to laugh, and then I had to try them on.
It’s not often that I try on a pair of shoes and actually feel comfort, but these were just right. Well, one half-size too small, but otherwise so comfortable it was time for a combined quest.
Six hours and two Paylesses later (six hours because I had to get through the rest of the work day, not because I was shopping!) I had found both the sandals I originally wanted, in my size, and the antithesis of my original goal (in that crucial half-size larger). But I just couldn’t bring myself to leave without the heart shoes. Comfort, cuteness, and a clearance pricetag are just too much to pass up when it comes to shoes.
If only the sandals were as comfortable. They are just comfortable enough and so much nicer-looking than my dirty sneakers that I will wear them fairly often, but the notorious heart shoes are so comfortable I will say “To heck with people who don’t respect me because of my footwear!” at least half as often.
I guess they say nature remains in balance for a reason.
