Each day as I leave my apartment, I open up my front door with a somewhat nervous anticipation. Much like Rapunzel gazing down from her tower wondering if today will be the day her prince will come, I too gaze down at my doormat and wonder if today will be the day that fucker brings my shoes back. Yes friends, someone stole my shoes. Someone stole my goddamn shoes. I’m sorry, but I’m still livid about this. And no joke, each day (as if not to scare my shoes away), I open up the door ever so slowly and peek through the small sliver I have created between the edge of the door and door jam. I’m just so damn hopeful my shoes have fled their captor and tiptoed their way back to their rightful owner. Sadly, each day I am continually disappointed.
What hurts even more is the fact this particular pair of shoes was my newest in the collection. Having just bought them a few weeks ago, they barely had any wear on them, which no doubt made them all the more desirable to the shoe bandit. My luck he’s probably a foot fetish kinda freak and my Diesels are already soiled. Never the less, I continue to keep my eyes pointed down when I walk the halls in hopes of catching the asshole who has my shoes on. I even have to fight the urge to run to the staircase when I hear the convicts in my building come and go. But really, what would I say, “nice shoes,” or better yet, jump him and violently rip them of his feet only to find out his shoes were an exact replica of mine, only in size 9. Lets face it, I don’t have that in me, but I am pretty pissed off. I feel like my soul has been taken—oh wait, it has (get it??? Soul = sole).
Stupid comedy aside, I do feel slightly violated. I just don’t understand how people steal things. As the adrenaline raged through my veins, and my stomach heavy with what felt like rocks, my immediate thought when I figured out they were gone from my doormat was “God, I hope someone is just teaching me a lesson” (more on this thought later). My next thought was, “ I wonder if they needed them?” For some reason this thought was slightly calming because in the scheme of things I don’t “need” this pair of shoes. I’d be willing to give them to someone worthy of needing them, but sadly I’m pretty sure the culprit didn’t need these shoes because we have all left pretty ratty shoes out on the mat before and they were all still there the next day, like it or not. Which takes me back to my first thought, “God, I hope someone is just teaching me a lesson.”
You see since winter has started, we have adopted a no-shoe policy for the house. After our first few snowfalls, and freezes it became very apparent that shoes could no longer be worn from the street into the house because of the residual snow tracked in, but more importantly because of the salt that is tracked in. We already have a problem with our floors being eternally dirty. Even as I vacuum, I see the debris landing on the hardwood in my tracks; each particle waiting to be picked up by my bare feet. And as much as I love my feet being the Swiffers of the household, especially right when I get out of the shower, we needed to do something to slow the floor rubbish---so keeping our shoes outside on the mat was the implemented.
Now apparently this wasn’t such a good idea to someone else in the building because a few days after our new policy went into affect, I had heard some light thumping noises at the base of my front door. They were just light enough for me to not give a shit. But a few hours later when I opened the door I was surprised to see two pairs of shoes placed in such a fashion as to take up as little space as possible in the hall. Mind you, our door is not in a major artery of the hallway. In fact, I would call my portion of the hallway a cul-de-sac of sorts, set aside from the staircase, with only one other apartment across from us. It’s for these reasons I find it funny our shoes were placed parallel against the door, heel upon toe, as if it were a four-car train in the station.
This continued a few more times because clearly I didn’t get the hint: my shoes were not welcome here!!! Never the less, I found it amusing that someone would touch a strangers shoes and even configure them in such a meticulous manner. It wasn’t until a pile of calf-high rain boots were stacked and puzzled together to create a child barricade that remained standing even without the support of the door that I started to get a little perturbed. I mean really people, this is only going to last for a few months during winter, and the shoes are on our mat. And while I realize those two square feet of prime real estate outside of my door were not factored into the lease, it is kind of an unwritten given.
As winter wore on, I started to hate my cul-de-sac neighbor. Even though I thought he was nice before, I started to resent his quite protests to our shoes. He didn’t seem like the type to care about shoes, but then again his girlfriend did just move in, and judging by their fights, she sounded slightly prudish.
It wasn’t until a few more shoe-jenga creations were made that a show down was to be had. I opened the door and there they stood, the anti-shoeists locking their door as they prepared to leave. My heart suddenly pounding at the thought of the oncoming confrontation, and yet I remained confidant in the face, arrogant even. I stood my ground and waited for eye contact. As soon as a connection was made, I slowly gazed down at the art form known as Shoe-Creation, and just as rehearsed, raised my head with a quite intensity. The left eyebrow cocked as if saying, “You think this is funny?” To my horror I was greeted with pleasant smiles and an introduction to the girlfriend, whom I had yet to meet. They never even looked at the shoes, but they did look at me inquisitively, which made me question why I still had my eyebrow in the raised position.
Because of this nice exchange, I was forced to believe my cul-de-sac neighbors were not the shoe artists. I later concluded Chazo must have been moving our shoes against the door so he could mop, but that too made no sense because he didn’t move the mat, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mop over the mats. Long story short… whomever the shoe artists were, I was hoping they were also the ones now trying to teach me a lesson because of my past insolence of not taking my shoes into the apartment. I don’t think it’s that crazy of a thought process; its something my mom would do---hell she’d throw them out for good measure.
Truth be told, my stolen shoes were bought at a Nordstrom’s Rack at a discount, and I could really only wear the shoes for about an hour before my knee would start to hurt. The left shoe actually caused my foot to over-pronate, which in turn caused my knee to compensate for the misaligned foot, which probably would eventually screw with the hip, back and neck. Oh, but they just looked so damn good with ALL of my jeans.
Four days later, my shoes still have not been returned to me, but to end this on a positive note, I hope the criminal is blessed with a slipped disk caused by the over-pronating left shoe, or at the very least black toe nails from shoving his size 12’s into my 11.5 Diesels.
