Bowing to St. Bandolino

I told you just the other day that I don’t have a shoe problem. You knew I was lying, right? Totally, lying. Granted, my book thing is a more pronounced problem, but I definitely love me some good shoes. In fact, I’ve mentioned exciting shoe incidents more than once on this blog.

Well, I needed a pair of red shoes. I personally find it astounding that I didn’t own a pair of red heels. Every woman should own some red heels. So Sassy and I went shoe shopping. I’ve taught her everything she knows about shoe shopping – not everything I know, of course. I still need her to need me. We went to the DSW hoping that I’d find a pair on clearance. There is nothing that sends me closer to Nirvana than finding a great pair of shoes on a super duper clearance. UNLESS it’s finding a first edition of a favorite book in the back of a book store, on the top shelf, behind two other books, in excellent condition WITH A SIGNATURE ON THE FACING PAGE.

So Sassy and I walked into the store and right in the very front were a really cute pair of red, satin pumps.

“Those, Mom. They’re perfect.” Sassy needlessly pointed them out to me.

“Yeah, those are really cute,” I agreed and hustled right past them.

Sassy held back, confused that I passed them by. “Try them on,” she insisted.

“Nope.”

“Why?”

We rounded the corner and headed for the size 7 clearance section. “Because if I try them on, they’ll fit and I don’t want to spend that much on shoes today.”

She looked at me like I was crazy, but it’s totally true. This always happens. It’s like science. The physics of shoes.

I tried on several pair of perfectly adorable red clearance shoes. There was one I liked quite a bit. Sassy kept bringing me shoes from the general population, most of which caused me to squinch up my nose. They were wrong color, too tall, too slutty, too something.

I modeled my cute clearance shoes in the mirror. They were adorable.

Then she brought those damn shoes we saw at the front of the store. “Please try them on,” she said. “They’re the cutest ones here.”

“Nooooo,” I whined. Boy, they were the cutest shoes. “I don’t want to try them on.”

“Yeeeees,” she said and shoved them at me. I’m telling you, they shimmered. They actually shimmered.

"ooooooooh," she said with reverence

“How much do they cost again?” I asked. She told me. I fainted.

“Try them on,” she repeated. I’m pretty sure I heard a very faint voice whispering my name from inside the box.

I caved in and tried them on. A person can’t fight the supernatural. Especially not a weak person such as myself.  The perfectly fine clearance shoes lay forgotten on the floor – “dropped like third period French.”

The damn things fit like Cinderella’s shoes, like they had been cobbled by elves just for my feet while I slept. 

Look at these beauties. You see why I didn’t even want to try them on.

Sigh. Now I never want to take them off.

Pretty, pretty shoes.