Teetering on the Brink

When it comes to shoes, I'm fussy. I have bad, very bad feet, and I will spend an inordinate amount of time shopping for shoes. By that, I mean instead of breezing into a store and running out in five minutes or less, I will actually spend as much as thirty minutes looking for the perfect fitting shoe. Mark likes it when I wander into the shoe store. It gives him a little extra time to run over to Home Goods and buy some more useless crap while I try on shoe after shoe.

This past Friday I fell for some television advertising. There they were, cool people like Joe Montana, spryly walking along, exercising, and losing weight just by wearing shoes. I just had to have me some of those Shape Up shoes. I was confident that these were the cure for my bad feet, and asked Mark to take me over to Famous Footwear. I couldn't wait to blow a hundred dollars on a pair of these magic shoes. Yes, I did try them on in the store, and because they were above my usual limit of how much I will spend on shoes, I walked back and forth through the store. Up the main aisle, through the women's section, and around the back at least three times. The shoes seemed fine. Very cushiony, well fitting, and they seemed to propel me forward as I walked.

This is what I don't understand. Every time I buy a pair of shoes, they seem fine in the store. Once I get out into the real world, however, they turn in to pinching, rubbing, ill-fitting torture devices. Shape Ups were no exception. I put them on to take Chandler for his walk and an immediate problem arose. I couldn't stand up. It was as if I was trying to balance myself on a pair of tennis balls, and when I tried walking out the door with Chandler I literally fell off the shoes. After managing to make it out the front gate I realized the shoes worked fine as long as I was moving forward at a good clip. It was when Chandler stopped to smell who had peed on his favorite bush, or to eat some grass, or when he tried to scrape up some road kill from the street for a quick snack, that I started teetering. I felt like one of those Weeble dolls that wobble. Unfortunately, unlike a Weeble, I wobble but I do fall down.

Luckily Famous Footwear allows you to return shoes. It'll be on my list of things to do today. I'm sure Mark won't mind. It'll give him another shot at combing through the Home Goods store for just the right piece of crap he can't live without.