October 16, 2000

shoe

I've gone and lost my shoe.

Not both. That would make sense. I lose my shoes from time to time, simply by taking them off in one part of the building I'm in, and then walking off without them. I've done that since college. I even had a reputation for it.

One morning I woke up at an ungodly hour (8:20 am. -- oh, for those long lost days of golden youth!) -- in order to get to an 8:30 class on time. Bleary-eyed, not quite focused, definitely not awake enough to give a damn, I padded to the elevator and leaned my head against the wall with my eyes closed, stabbing at the button in a desultory fashion.

The door behind me opened.

"Hey, Yuhri." It was the harp player who lived in one of the turret rooms. I mumbled something at her without looking, eyes still closed.

"Like your shoes," she offered, as she passed.

I woke up enough to track her compliment to its source, and looked down at my stockinged feet. I'd forgotten my shoes. Probably a bad thing, considering the Rochester winter; it had snowed the night before, and snowdrifts outside the front door were well over my head.

"Oh," I sighed, and started wandering back to the room. The elevator doors opened, perversely on cue, and pinged behind me.

"Oh my God," the Harpist carolled, joyfully. "You forgot your shoes. I have to tell him about this---"

She reversed course and dove back into her room; I dug under my bed and heard shrieks of hilarity coming through the walls.

And so it goes.

I found my shoe. It was hiding under a map of the US in an empty cubicle around the corner. I'm unwilling to accuse it of running away; nevertheless, because awareness is prickling under my skin in a most uncomfortable manner, I tied it to my filing cabinet with a set of headphones and a cable cord.

Some stranger from upstairs paused to read the Etch-A-Sketch outside my cubicle -- "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." (compliments of Arien) -- and stayed a little longer to watch me engaging in shoe bondage.

"Kinky," he commented, and wandered on. I heard him a few minutes later in another bank of cubicles further down.

"You know there's a girl over there tying her shoes to her walls--?"