Soleful reflection

Once upon a time when I was in my earliest 20s, I had this pair of shoes.

They were black patent, flat-heeled "pumps" with a bow on top. They were beautiful and went with everything... I wore them a lot. I dressed for work back then; back when I had the energy to wear panty hose.

Fast forward 20-something years to about five years ago.

I was in Goodwill on my lunch break, perusing the merchandise, scoffing at the overpriced items.....overpriced used items, mind you....and I happened across a pair of black patent, flat-heeled "pumps" with a black bow on top.

OMG, I thought. These are the exact same shoes I used to have that I loved. I immediately looked at the size. They were a size 6. I usually wear a 6.5 wide or a 7 regular so I could handle a 6 I thought. I took off my tennis shoes and crammed the right shoe onto my socked foot.

It fit!!!

Well it fit because I made it fit; but it fit regardless, so I bought them and immediately threw them in my closet for a few days before I actually wore them to work.

The first day I wore them to work, I was so proud. I felt young again. I was the me of my earliest 20s. And they fit just right with knee-highs. I was hot.

Just after I got to work, however, I noticed that part of the shoe, the patent part, had creased from the movement of walking and had flaked off leaving a white crooked line on the shoe. I tried to fix it by putting scotch tape over the crease, but I put the tape on crooked. I pulled the tape back up, because I can't have a crooked piece of tape on my shoe, and when the tape came off so did the patent black.

Crap.

I grabbed a black sharpie, an old trick of mine, and colored the white jagged line until it was invisible.

There.

An hour or so went by. I was walking down the hallway to my office and the sole of my right shoe began to come off. It's a feeling I cannot describe.

Crap.

My boss suggested that I use Spray Mount to adhere the sole to the shoe again. I found the spray and went outside.

It worked. The sole stuck and all was good. But my elated feeling was slowly deflating. After all, I had a glued on sole and now there were a thousand more creases in the black patent.

When my friend and coworker Alice came around for tea (that is my morning break), we headed for the kitchen and I began telling her about what had happened with my shoes... how they were the epitome of my youth; how they made me feel young again... how they had cracked and how the sole had come undone only to get reglued... how I had overcome all that and was still positive.

Just before we approached the kitchen door, my left sole came off. I am not kidding you. It came off exactly after I had told her about the right sole coming off.

It came off right on cue. I had to be on some comedy show.

We looked at each other and then cracked up.

My beautiful black patent, flat-heeled "pumps" with a bow on top shoes that represented my youth were dry rotted! There was no use trying to glue on the left sole, even though I tried and I tried, believe me.

I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. I knew my youth wasn't dead just because those shoes were dead... I know my age but I don't feel it. That experience taught me that you should never try to go back in time. You should appreciate the past, and learn from it, but you should always push forward.