I have a long history of footwear with murderous intentions.
In the ’70s, I had a pair of clogs that I loved. Unfortunately, when you wear your wooden-soled clogs with cable-knit tights and you have unstable ankles, bad things can happen. My mother eventually took the clogs away.
In college, I had two pairs of shoes that tried to kill me. One was a pair of black sneakers that would send me skittering down the stairs, the soles slipping along the edges of the steps, until my foot would catch a horizontal surface. The other was a pair of knockoff LL Bean boots. The boots, like the sneakers, tried to do me in on the stairs. Oh, they were tricky, holding onto snow and ice in their treads, releasing the slush when I was on the stairs in the Student Union or Monteith Hall. I narrowly missed being thrown over the big marble staircase over the info booth at the Student Union, but they got me on the stairs in Monteith, sending me face-first down a flight of stairs.
I managed to catch myself by putting my hands out in front of me, but I still have damage to my right shoulder from that little episode.
I managed to avoid angry shoes for many years, until I started working as a lawyer. Fortunately, the shoes that tried to get me shortly after I moved to New York were somewhat inept, doing nothing more than causing me some embarrassment and a scraped knee after they made me wipe out in the middle of Rockefeller Center one spring day.
Today, though — another attempt, by a different pair of shoes. I was crossing Houston to change trains, navigating through road resurfacing and trying to beat the light, when my left shoe took a half step ahead of me. I landed half out of the shoe and my ankle rolled, causing me to scrape my foot against the asphalt and nearly sending me into oncoming traffic.
Wonder which pair will come for me next?
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