Shoe Fly

          Aha.  You thought I misspelled that, didn’t you?  You thought I meant Shoo Fly.  But no; today I am talking about my latest foray into the frustrating realm of BUYING SHOES.

          And let me just say that I am not one of these women with eight thousand pairs of shoes.  I like them, but I’m not an addict.  I do breeze by the shoe department and slow down when I see a gorgeous pair of high heels.  I’ll pick one up to admire it, suddenly notice it has a red sole, and then sigh.  This means trouble.  This mean it’s a Christian Louboutin high heel and will have an insane price tag. And I think we can both agree that a thousand dollars—or even seven hundred, as many of his are—is an insane price for a pair of shoes, even if they are gorgeous.

          So I try to shop where nobody’s ever heard of this Louboutin guy, nor his outlandish prices.  And it works pretty well, except for last week when I needed a new pair of tan sandals with a heel.  My old ones are at least eight years old, and though I stopped caring that they are no longer the most current style, I do care when they begin to fall apart.

          Up and down the aisles I went, hunting for a shoe with a medium heel, two or three inches high.  Men, you have no idea what women (or their backs) go through to stay current with the dictates of designers.  I couldn’t find anything shorter than five inches.  So, to quote the entire state of Utah (where I spent my childhood), I thought, “What the heck—I’ll just try on a tall one, and see how it feels.”

          Mind you, it has been at least ten years since I’ve worn Barbie pumps or any shoe with a five-inch heel.  I sat down, slipped my foot into a camel-colored beauty, buckled the ankle strap, and stood up.

WHAMMO!   My calf seized in an immediate Charlie Horse.  I tried not to yelp, collapsed back onto my chair, and then struggled to unbuckle the shoe. It would not unbuckle.  The pain was escalating as my calf cramped tighter and tighter.  Finally I got the shoe off (threw it, I think), and then tried to stand, barefoot.  But my foot was stuck in a toe-point, as if encased in an invisible ballet pointe shoe.  

And it was killing me. It took both hands and the strength of Hercules to finally bend my ankle, then stand on my foot, trying to stretch my calf out again.  I walked.  It throbbed.  I walked.  It throbbed.

Nobody knows where the term, “Charlie Horse” came from, but other countries have better names for it. It’s called the paralyzer in Portugal, the horse’s kiss or muscle hangover in Germany, donkey bite, water buffalo, or old woman in Italy, thigh hen in Norway, wooden leg in Finland and Israel, and rat in Guam.  Clearly these are places where women are trying to be fashionable, but have worn flat shoes too long.

I could feel the stares of young ingenues all around me, and yes I can read minds but I refuse to print what they were thinking.  Suffice it to say I ignored them.  Their time will come.

I continued the hunt for a sandal with a lower heel and finally found one. Fortunately, it also had a lower price.  So victory was mine.

And you may also experience the victory of successful shopping, simply by clicking here for my latest books.  No Charlie Horse required.