The Root of All Evil - Shoes

Yesterday afternoon I decided that I would spend the weekend without shoes.

They are a necessary evil, I guess, but they also represent everything in our lives that we care way too much about – work.  Casting away my shoes for a few days is to cast away the troubles of daily life, and to allow myself the courtesy of relaxing.  As shoes are a symbol, so is my temporary rejection of that symbol.

My coworkers are intellectual people, so when a couple of people asked me if I had plans for the weekend, I said that my plans were to not wear shoes the whole weekend.  The responses were curious, and I will share two of them:

“Shoes?  I’m going spend the weekend without pants!”

“Try not to get pinworms.”

Mere mortals just can’t understand.

An evil thing is generally something that works its way into our lives without our permission, and that is the way I suspect I got my first pair.  I didn’t buy them, someone else probably bought them for me, and I suspect it was my mother, thinking she was doing a good thing.  We would have been in Dewey Parrott’s shoe store in my hometown.  Dewey is my mother’s second cousin, and for many years I associated him with the funny smell of shoe leather.  Like most other small businesses, Dewey was sunk by cheap department store junk made in Chinese sweatshops, but I am willing to bet that lots of people will remember the way that store smelled.

See how enticing the evil shoes are?  You are thinking of some fond memory now of small town wholesomeness.  Back to my previous thought, the way Google works, this page will probably end up with ads for Nike’s Super Mega Just Doits, some computer program thinking it is providing relevant content for the site with advertisements for shoes.

So after arriving home from work early, I decided to cast off the old zapatos for 48 hours.  I had stopped by the store on the way home to pick up some necessities – several packages of jelly beans, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label.  It occurred to me that my newly found freedom would go well with jelly beans, but in order to avoid the danger of my barefootedness removing all traces of civilization, a couple fingers of 15-year old Scotch at various times throughout my weekend of refection seemed perfectly appropriate.  After all, I’m not a savage.

By the way, you should never, ever, ever, eat jelly beans while drinking 15-year-old Scotch.  The two things are forever separate.  This is a conundrum for me, as these are two of my favorite things.  It’s tragic, but I live with the reality. 

This morning, I am going to enjoy some jelly beans and head out to my little garden to water my plants, and I will enjoy the way I feel in my 20 year old sweatpants with the elastic cut out of the cuffs, and let the green grass massage my feet.  The feeling is fantastic.

The idea of catching pin worms scares me, but only a little bit.  I’m pretty sure the Scotch will kill them anyway.