once upon a shoe

And now a fairy tale -

Once upon a time there was a girl who was going to a fancy event.  So fancy that she couldn't even afford a ticket.  But a very nice lady bought her a ticket, so she got dressed up and even curled her hair!  She looked so cute and, because the invitation said festive attire, she wore her patent leather red shoes.  Pointy and fancy, but with a sensible two and a half inch heel. The short heel was important because she was going to need to walk pretty far to get to the magical land of the 30th floor of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Building.

So she is running late to her fancy event, because she is a girl who was bad at planning.  Also, she kind of has a headache, which had made her grouchy and maybe even a little mean to her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend did not have a ticket to the fancy event, so he was going to have to sit at home by himself.  And she may have been mean about it.  Also about other things.  Because sometimes pretty girls are mean when they are rushed and/or having a bad day.

The girl was walking to her event.  She had to walk all of the blocks because she is broke and hates cabs.  It was a little too cold for her dress and so she was walking quickly, even running a bit when she was attempting to cross a street before the light changed.

She gets to the block just before the fancy building and skittered across the intersection to beat the flashing orange hand.  There she was, a mere 40 or so steps from the entrance when, all of a sudden, her gait became unbalanced.  She feels as though, with every step, she is stepping into a hole, or perhaps a vicious crack in the sidewalk.

She looks down upon her beautiful left shoe and is devastated to discover that the heel had broken and when she attempts to fix it, it snaps right off in her hand.

Here she is six minutes late and holding a very critical part of her shoe.  She knows she had two to three hours of socializing to do and it cannot be done in her current state.  A younger, more sassy version of this particular girl might have just gone barefoot.  But this girl has a title.  And business cards.  She could no longer go barefoot to expensive benefit events.

So she does what any damsel in distress would do.  She calls her long-suffering boyfriend and hopes he has forgotten all of the not-so-nice things she had said before.

She is in luck, he is in a super hero kind of mood.  He asks what kind of shoes he should bring and tells her he'll be there as soon as he can.

As she presses the end button on her cellphone, her heart floods with love and realization.  He is quite simply the nicest boy who ever lived.  To fish through her side of the closet for the black mary jane pumps (all words he does not quite understand, in a language he believes himself to be fluent), travel through downtown Chicago traffic, on a Saturday, no less, to go to a party he was not invited to...all for her.

She walks into the party, trying to give off the appearance that absolutely nothing is wrong, that she is supposed to be slightly lopsided.  She macgyvers a temporary solution with some gum, dutifully donated by a 13 year-old boy who, perhaps, has never seen a girl put a shoe back together with gum.

Half an hour later her cellphone vibrates while she is piling a plate with delicious looking sushi.  She gave the plate to the person standing closest to her and runs, ever so daintily out of the room.

As she runs, her temporary solution proved itself to be, well, temporary and the heel of her shoe falls off yet again. The people standing at the door stop her and attempt to discreetly tell her that her heel has fallen off.  They are distressed, because they are good at their door-guarding jobs.

"What are you going to do?" the lady guard says in a distressed tone.
"Oh, I am about to be rescued!" the girl says as she skitters down all 30 floors in the elevator.

She runs outside and does not even regret not getting her coat out of the coat check, she is so happy.

There he is, the valiant knight in a green hoodie walking towards her carrying a pair of black Steve Madden mary janes.

"You came!" she cries.
"Of course I did," he states in his most matter of a fact voice, as if she is silly to be so surprised and happy.

He waits as the girl quickly changes her shoes and then he picks up the broken ones.

"Have fun at your party," he says and kisses her forehead before walking off towards his Mazda 3 (the noblest of steeds).

And she did have fun at the party.  But was also very happy to go home to her knight who was sitting on the couch playing Angry Birds.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The end.