Foot wear

****If your shoes are not good, afterwards don't come and brood and spoil my mood***

During our lifetime, we have to walk or run many thousands of kilometers and in order to do so, we need good footwear. Unfortunately, unlike our prehistoric ancestors, we have lost the ablity to walk barefoot across all types of surfaces and we often need to buy shoes.

All my life, I had bought comfortable shoes. I always prioritized comfort over appearance. When you have to stay on your feet for most of the day, you have to think of wearing shoes that allow you to do so. Sometimes I worry that I have to stand so much, most of the time switching to being in front of the class, then at the complete back that I might just grow roots. I can visualize myself standing still during an assessment only letting my eyes move around so that I could see who was cheating or not and then when I would try to move, I wouldn't be able as I had grown roots.

Once when I went in a shop where I don't usually go, which should have been the first warning signal, I saw a cute pair of glossy gray sandals with kitten heels. There was only one strap which was in the shape of the bow and that was the only factor that would keep my foot in the sandal. When I tried it on, my feet immediately glammed up, from Cinderella the pauper to the one at the ball, within seconds. The heels were not high so it shouldn't bother me. I gave in to the impulse and bought it. That should have been the second alarm signal, impulse buying is never good.

I wore it a few times when I didn't have much planned and the experience was not that bad. The clatter of my heels on the floor was louder than what I was used to but I didn't mind. It was like announcing my arrival before I actually came.

One day, I had been invited to take a student to a competition and since I would be on TV, I chose to wear a more presentable outfit and the new pair of shoes. I had classes in the morning and I had one assessment to give. If I wanted to be able to complete my work before going for the recording, I had to be on time to class.

While I was walking to class, I met one of my colleagues who wanted to ask me a question about a student we both had in class. Now I couldn't politely tell her that I was late already, so I tried to be discreet about it. Each word that I said was punctuated by a small step backward.

'Yes,' a step. 'I know,' a step. 'her,' another step. Soon, there was a distance of 2 meters between us and I hoped that she would get the message that I had to go to class. However, she threw my efforts to the dogs when she walked back 3 steps to be next to me to continue talking. Finally, after 5 minutes, she looked at her watch and exclaimed,

'Oh my god, you made me late.' And she left in a hurry. I made her late? Really?

With my heels clicking on the tiles of the corridor, I hurried to class. As soon as I reached at the door, the students noticed me and turned to face me. As I crossed the threshold, the heel of my right shoe got trapped in the metal structure that formed the bottom part of the doorway and given the momentum of my body which was pushing forward and the force of gravity, the little bow, that made up the first part of the strap, snapped into two. With arms flailing on both sides I tried to brake my forward fall and succeeded, but it was too late. My right shoe was dead.

As I looked at my shoe still trapped in the threshold and my empty foot, and then the expressions of the students, I did not know what to do! I knew that my students would make fun of me, so why give them that pleasure? I threw my head back and laughed at my own misfortune. Some of the kids felt bad that I beat them to it and they could only give me embarrassed smiles.

I had to take an elastic band and tie it around the bow trying to make it stay in place. It held on long enough for me to write down the questions of the assessment on the whiteboard.

After class, I half-limped to the staffroom where I convinced a friend to take me shopping. The closest shop only had orthopaedic shoes and given time constraints, I had to choose plain black flats which I would never have opted for on any ordinary day. When I compared the two pairs of shoes I had worn, one in the morning, and the other now, I felt stumped. All I had wanted was to flaunt my little pair of glammed up footwear. What I ended up doing was the opposite.

At least during the recording, my feet were not visible. And now when I buy shoes, I have to be extremely careful as we never know, a threshold might be out to get me.