Sassy Shoes

Shirl the Girl left a comment on the Party Girls talking about sassy, sexy shoes. As I started responding to her comment, I found I was writing too much for a comment response so I thought it would be more appropriate as a post. Here it is --

Sassy shoes - Wear them if you have them.

When I was walking -- long, long ago -- and started falling for no reason and with no warning, I fell one rainy, sloppy day getting out of the car. My hose were ripped, my leg was scraped, slightly bloody and muddy. I was going to a meeting that I was to chair, including clients and people who worked for me.

In those days I was a stickler for being on time, so I took off my heels and walked in stocking feet over the wet pavement into the elevator, down the hall into the meeting. As I opened the door, there was chuckling and someone inside said, "It's about time." Then they saw me as the door opened wider, I must have been a site because a heavy silence filled the room. The meeting began only a few minutes late.

That evening I went shopping for flats.

That was the last time I wore heels. I had some really good shoes, professional, sexy, sassy, and I was sorry to see them gone from my closet. Someone got a fantastic bargain of expensive, gently worn shoes, and I entered a new phase of my life a couple of inches shorter.

As a former fashionista, I envy Shirl's ability to wear sassy shoes, applaud her willingness to do so, but caution her -- please be careful. I was lucky it was only a scrape, albeit a visibly messy one.

I hadn't thought of this until I wrote a personal "What it means to be disabled." I'm pretty good about not dwelling in deep personal thinking of what life used to be, until a fleeting memory brings with it an entire scene like this one. It was kind of sad, kind of funny, somewhat traumatic at the time. Now it is a mere sliver of a memory of days in another life.

technorati tags: downthemspath, shoes,