My mom, the world's foremost connoisseur of comfort shoes, digs this store.
Sometimes when she shops here I come along, not because I like The Walk Shop's shoes, but because I like Peet's coffee and there is a Peet's next door, and if I am nice and patient and humor her as she agonizes over a pair of patent leather Birkenstocks, she will buy me a soy latte and a vegan ginger cookie.
Nonetheless, I make it perfectly clear to my mother that, while I drink soy lattes and eat vegan cookies, I retired my Birks the day Jerry Garcia died. And even in my dirtiest, hippiest days, I've never, ever worn Tevas. Say what you will about Birkenstocks, but Tevas are the footwear equivalent to the band Phish.
Bottom line: I don't do the ugly comfort shoe thing anymore.
Of course, there is an exception to every rule. Some time ago, on one of these Walk Shop visits with mom, I spotted a unique pair of Dansko clogs. They were black suede with a colorful patterned material not unlike African kente cloth sewn onto the front of the shoe. My mother encouraged me to try them on, reminding me, as she often does, that if I don't start wearing more sensible footwear, I will end up with a Morton's neuroma. Or at the very least, a bad bunion problem.
So I tried them on.
So comfy.
And cute...right?
Right?
*looks down at shoes*
Anyway, I fell for them. Sure, I don't wear *that* kind of footwear usually, but something about them seemed acceptable. I told myself they were fabulously bohemian chic, and brought them up to the register where I asked the saleswoman to toss the unorthopedically correct but oh-so-hot Michael Kors platforms I'd been wearing earlier into a shopping bag. I wore the Dansko clogs home.
I wore those clogs almost every day for a while. Sure, they were technically "comfort shoes", but they were made with that funky unique print. I kept telling myself that I looked fabulously bohemian. It was my mantra.
*inhale*
IamfabulouslybohemianIamfabulouslybohemianIamfabulouslybohemian.
*exhale*
Like an older, twinless, more-ethnic, less-anorexic Mary Kate Olson, if you will.
Then one lazy afternoon, as I lay on my sofa watching television and eating a Tofu Pup, I saw that bitchy menstruating queen from "What Not To Wear" pull the very same fucking clogs out of some pitiful nerd's closet and shake them at the camera shrieking, "WHAT THE HELL ARE *THESE*??!! ARE THESE *SHOES*?? ARE YOU *KIDDING* ME??? I THINK THESE THINGS WERE MADE FROM A *POTHOLDER* I KNIT FOR MY MOTHER IN FOURTH GRADE!!!"
Then he threw them, with a hateful vengeance, into a pail of garbage.
Fuck my life. read more