Get Your Shoes On

Near the top of the list of things that make me bad at being a girl: I hate shoes. I don’t enjoy shopping for them and I’d just as soon not wear them. In fact I grew up in one of those houses where everyone takes her shoes off at the door. When I was a child “Kids, get your shoes on!” hollered by adults into stairwells, was synonymous with “it’s time to go.” That made it unpopular, signaling as it did the end of whatever fun was being had unshod, and the start of, more often than not, car rides and bedtime.

During my adult life, people stopped saying “get your shoes on” to me – more because I lived alone than because I was wearing shoes. It was my cousin Leigh who reminded me how much fun it could be. We were reminiscing about the first cars we owned, and his was one that refused to start in the rain. He planned to be out late in Manhattan and the forecast called for heavy rain at night, so he asked to swap cars with his dad. My uncle said no – for no good reason we can remember, but likely because his son woke him out of a sound sleep. When Leigh protested that he would have trouble with his car my uncle insisted, “no you won’t. If you do, just call me.” Fast-forward to 2:30am, when Leigh, wet and mad at the local train station, wakes his father up again – this time with no greeting save “get your shoes on!”

There’s danger in not wearing shoes, especially if you were born without an ounce of Graceful in your body. One evening when I was meant to be waiting by the phone, I had toddled off to the kitchen when my cell phone sang, and went running full speed to answer the call. Full speed into the corner of the couch, it turns out, with enough force to leave my fourth toe pointing to the right (rather than forward, which I much prefer). That day I discovered I can carry on a normal conversation only seconds after breaking a toe, and the caller will be none the wiser. This is not the type of talent one hopes to show off repeatedly.

Normal people go to the doctor – or perhaps the emergency room – under similar circumstances. I have an aversion to doctors, by which I mean the last time I went to one was 1994. After a bit of painful dragging of my toe into a forward facing position, I taped it to my middle toe and went on with my life. Nonetheless, this unfortunate incident halved my shoe-wearing capacity, at least for the period the swelling lasted.

I brought two shoes on my brief trip to Norway that weekend – one on my good foot and one in my suitcase, with an orthopedic boot on what I had come to call “my broke-ass toe.” In fact, my broke-ass toe did not appreciate gassing and braking around central Norway in my rental car, but I was having too much fun driving in the taxi lane and flying over Bergen’s imitation of a speed bump to worry about it. I find driving in countries where you don’t understand the signs to be liberating. I doubt I can say the same for my passengers.

Giddy at the prospect of reuniting with good friends, I wore two shoes to the evening’s entertainment, and left The Boot in the boot, as the English say. Sadly, the short walk from car to concert venue left me near tears, so when a friend went back for an umbrella, I asked her to bring me The Boot, so I could enjoy the show in comfort. I considered dropping off my extra shoe at the coat check, but rejected the idea as too ridiculous even for me.

Some time after the show I realized I was no longer carrying around a single shoe. It remains unclear when and where the footwear went astray. I like to think it has since led a full and interesting life in Norway. My friends insist it was simply too scared to get back in the car with me.

Late that evening, I could be found ensconced in a hotel room, putting the world to rights – or at least American politics. It was early 2008 and Obama had just started to galvanize liberal thinkers and tell the Bush regime to get its shoes on; the Democratic primary had yet to be decided. I told my friends I believed Obama would be President but, if it weren’t for the groundswell of support he was gaining, I would have told you it wasn’t his time yet. I had him pegged for 2012 or 2016, as I feared we weren’t quite ready for his brand of change. “But if everybody’s ready, count me in. I’m ready right now. I’ve got my shoe on.”