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Monday 22 October 2012

A package sends me searching for nostalgia

I just got a package in the mail.  Actually, it was a big box with a pair of boots that I'd forgotten I'd ordered.  Look at this photo.  You can understand why I was tempted and gave in to temptation right away.  I can't understand how I failed to remember that I'd done this.

I am a 70 year old woman and I just bought a pair of boots that I could have used if I were under 20 and looking for a not-so-revered job on the street.  Not that I regret it, I'm going to wear those boots with joy, but it does make me wonder about   the Lorna/shoe relationship.

I can remember shoes I owned or wanted at almost any age---under 12, I wanted high-top Converse runners, which only boys wore at the time and only came in black.  I didn't get them until I was in my 40's and Dave bought them for me in red.

During the teen years, I was torn.  The first half of my teen years I had to wear brown tie-up oxfords with my school uniform, so naturally my shoe of choice then was a white and silver brocade round-toed pump.  Unnaturally, I bought it in a size 6, which was a size and a half smaller than my foot.  The second half of my teens, I was a schoolteacher, and because I was both short and young, the remembered shoe of that time was high-heeled and black, but very, very serious.

Getting through the 20's without a pair of killer sandals was not going to happen, and I remember having lime green modified-gladiator sandals as well as some much-loved, worn-to-tatters white boots with a zipper up the back.

My 30's were blessed with wonderful shoes that I bought while I was living in Germany---amazing styles and colours that, because of the great dollar-to-deutschemark rate, seemed too good to be true.  I remember gifting my mother and my sisters with German shoes too, at least one pair of which is still in my mother's house now.

My 40's happened in the 80's and I had boots, sandals, shoes and running shoes that complemented my big-eye, big-hair, glitzy self.  These, particularly the boots, lasted until we did our big down-sizing in 2008, and I swear I've seen some of them at the Mercury Bar since.

In my 50's, I started hearing rumblings from Dave about the danger of my wearing heels around the same time as I developed a bunion the size of an onion on one of my feet---definitely connected, says Dave, to the size 6 shoes of my teen years.  I still managed though to wear boots and shoes with wedges, high heels and open toes or slingbacks---if it was dangerous, I was drawn to it, if it was really dangerous, I couldn't resist.

When I was 65, Dave gave me a pair of anklehigh runners that were covered in beads and sequins at about the same time that I bought a pair of bluegray satiny sequinned shoes with a 4 inch wedge and which laced to the knee.  We were still at odds, me and the person who cared so much more than I did about feet.

I don't have any heels now, and though I kept the 4 inch wedges because I wore them to Emily's wedding, and because it made me cry to think of letting them go, I don't wear them anymore.

I wear shoes like this.

So that's why I needed camel-coloured over-the-knee suede boots.  I knew I could convince you.

7 comments:

  1. I've been away for a while and this is what I come back to. You should thank Dave for trying to save you from yourself, and don't go down to the market wearing a red dress and those boots. Pokemon the persistent

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  2. I hate to wear shoes, but I love them. I'm happiest when I'm barefooted, but I lust after shoes all the time. Shoes I have no where to wear. I've given up trying to understand it, I just try to control it. :-) Those are fabulous boots!
    blessings
    ~*~

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  3. I will never understand the thing that women have with shoes. Of course, I am reduced to wearing runners. I do this not particularly by choice, but I really don't mind. Well, I mind not having the choice, but I don't mind the partial solution being runners.

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  4. I'm convinced! I need a pair too. :))

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  5. Be sure to give us the privilage of a photo when you wear those boots. I used to love shoes, but with artificial knees and circulatory problems, I ams reduced to "walking shoes tieups, socks, (No constricting hose), so fashion, I am not. Alive, I am. But footwear is no longer fun.

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  6. Damn, Damn, and double damn. A person, me as it happens, stays up til after midnight trying to make up a witty reply, thinks he's succeeded, presses "Publish", only to have his wit and sarcasm (I don't try for that, it just hops aboard without an invittion) disappear into the ether (is that a word or just something people confuse with 'thin air'?). So to hell with wit. What I was trying to say is I'm selfish when I bug her about her shoes cuz I'll be the one pushing the wheelchair sooner than you can say puss in boots. Lovingly, her other fraction

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  7. Hmm, worked this time. Maybe you just have to PUNCH that 'Publish' button for all yer worth. Let's see if it works twice, Me. You know, the same angry guy who just said Damn!

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