One of These Things is Not Like the Other

I hope I don’t live to regret posting this entry. You will probably ask yourself why on earth I would care to share this story with anyone, much less everyone, but you have to be able to laugh at yourself in life and laughter should be shared, right?

I'd made fun of my sister for years after she’d called me one day to tell me that she’d been on the elevator at work and had looked down at her feet and realized she had on one brown and one black shoe, of the same brand and style. She’d stood there hoping and praying no one would notice and tried to remain obscure for the rest of the day. Then one day, karma took care of me and I've never made fun of her for that again.

I went to work one morning last summer and my day seemed to be off to a normal start. I worked in a large office with cubicles, but they were the ones with short walls and very little privacy so we could all see what was going on around us. I'd walked around the office to use the copier, fax machine, check my inbox, etc. and didn’t notice anything unusual. At about 9:00 am or so I went to use the restroom. Almost as soon as I’d sat down, I glanced down at my feet and immediately gasped out loud and stood back up. I let out an involuntary sound of some sort of panicked moan and must’ve said "OMG" three or four times out loud. I was absolutely mortified. I’d looked down at my two feet and saw two COMPLETELY different shoes staring back at me. I'm not talking about a brown and black pair of the same brand and style. Nope. I'm not talking about two shoes that could’ve passed for sisters, they couldn’t have passed for second cousins! One was camel colored with a flower on top and the other was dark brown with straps running across the front. The heels were even shaped completely different. There wasn't one thing similar about these two shoes! I was in shock. I wanted to crawl out of the window and run home. I could not believe that I’d walked around the office like that for over an hour unnoticed and was horrified at the thought of one of my co-workers seeing me like that. I stood in the stall paralyzed as I planned my escape. About that time a co-worker walked in and I reluctantly opened the stall door and pointed down to my feet, then asked if she would go to my desk and get my purse. She was bent over laughing WITH me, not AT me! There was absolutely no way I could've walked back through the office like that. All I needed was for one of the guys from the sales department to see me. I would've never lived it down. I still can't understand how no one noticed when I was walking around the office for over an hour like that, but am so grateful they didn’t.

By the way, there's a perfectly logical explanation for this horrifying mishap. I was getting dressed that morning and had put on one of each shoe, then walked into my oldest daughter’s room to ask her which one looked better with my khaki pants. Apparently, when I walked back to my room to finish getting ready I’d gotten sidetracked and unfortunately never gave the shoes a second thought. Don’t ask me how I managed to walk around without noticing the half-inch difference in the two heels. Take a look at these shoes and ask yourself what I was smoking that morning! The answer is nothing and I still assure you that I’m not a blonde!

My co-worker brought me my purse and I literally sprinted to the parking lot and called my boss from my cell phone explaining my sudden disappearance. I laughed at myself all the way home thanking God that no one had noticed. This definitely made the time I wore a T-shirt around all day with the cute little “pocket” on my back left shoulder seem mild in comparison!