Earth shoes pt. 1

After a gloriously sunny day of hanging out at the student union, window shopping and pretending we were university students, SW and I headed to the parking garage to get into her family’s, bulbous late model station wagon and drive home. We began to climb the concrete stairs in the parking garage to the third level where the car was parked. SW, who favored baggy, brightly colored overalls, had her pant legs rolled into cuffs at least five inches above her ankles, in order to show off her striped socks and tan earth shoes.

Earth shoes were boxy leather shoes designed by a Scandinavian person and the soles of the shoes mimicked sand on the beach—so your heel would always be lower than the rest of your foot resulting in better posture and extra calorie burning with every step. They resembled shoe boxes on the foot. Since I had large feet, I went through an abbrieviated earth shoe phase, but I was sensitive enough about the size of my large feet and accentuating their hugeness was not worth the hip factor of the shoes. SW had tiny feet and tiny earth shoes were so ugly they looked cute. She carried a huge shoulder bag that was made out of grey wool fabric with a large stripe of rainbow colors

As we headed up the stairs, SW suddenly exclaimed, "I can't move!" At that moment, I bumped into her since I was walking behind her. She kept saying, "I can't move! I can't move!" I saw that her foot was on top of her shoulder bag, which was slung over her shoulder. When she tried to stand up, she couldn't—the shoulder strap of her bag held her down. Her foot was on the bag keeping it on the step, so every time she started to stand up she increased the pressure holding the bag to the floor. When I realized this, I started laughing so hard I couldn't talk much less explain or help her stand up. I was paralyzed with laughter--all I could do was point at her foot and gulp air. When I looked at her tiny earth shoe foot on the multi colored wool bag on the dirty, chewing gum encrusted step, I could do nothing but double over again with laughter. The family coming up the stairs behind us was exasperated since we were blocking the stairs. Later, we realized they probably thought we were helplessly high. We managed to flatten ourselves against the stair railing, still laughing hysterically and they were able to get by us. After what seemed like 20 minutes, but I am sure it was less than a minute, SW picked up her foot and took it off her purse and was able to stand up and walk again. We stumbled to the car, still laughing that out of control, sustained gut laugh that makes you choke.

For months after that every time we tried to tell the story to our friends, I would see a mental picture of her little earth shoe foot on her purse and I began helpless, spasms of laughter. We could barely get the story out and when we managed to explain what happened, our usually supportive girl friends would look at us like we were freaks—it didn’t seem funny to anyone but us.