Elegy for a little yellow shoe

Today I did something that makes me a little concerned about my sanity. It's only ever happened once before, in my entire life. But worryingly, the time before that it happened was only four weeks ago. I'm deeply anxious about what this might mean for me.

It's so horrible I can barely even bear to confess it. I ... I ....(deep breath) .... I returned a pair of shoes.

I know! Me! Returned shoes! Me, who is mentally ripping out the fireplace in her bedroom and designing a special shoe cupboard to go in there instead! This is surely some kind of sickness.

The first time it happened, in early December, I had bought a pair of pretty plain black ballet flats from David Jones. I tried on ten thousand pairs and ended up buying one, but even as the assistant was lovingly wrapping them in tissue paper, I had a sense of foreboding. I knew they weren't quite right. I knew they pinched a little at the heel.  But I bought them, because my old flats had fallen to bits and I desperately needed a new pair. Such folly.

And so it was that the very next morning, I took myself and the shoes straight back there, and returned them. And at the time, I thought that was the end of it. I was allowed a single lapse, wasn't it?

Apparently I wasn't, because it's happened again.

I blame the interweb. I bought these little beauties from French Sole in the UK, because I adore yellow shoes and there is a serious dearth of nice yellow shoes in Melbourne at the moment. I was on tenterhooks waiting for them to arrive - they took forever, because they got caught up in the Christmas mail backlog -  but they FINALLY arrived a few days ago.

I took them out of the box, exclaimed over the gorgeous deep colour and the lovely rounded toe. Like Cinderella, I carefully slid my dainty pointed foot into their shape, stood up .... and realised there was no way I could walk in them because they Just Didn't Fit.

Oh woe is me! Oh tragedy! The agony of a shoe that does not fit!

I'd have cut off a toe, or a heel, if I'd thought it would help; just like Cinderella's ugly stepsisters.  I can certainly empathise with them. But I put the mental knife away, because part of the reason for migrating to ballet flats is because I seem to have reached some kind of shoe denouement, where I am no longer prepared to suffer for beauty. Consequently, I'm wearing heels less and less, and flats more and more.

It was with great sorrow that I boxed them back up and sent them home to England. On the front of the box, below the address, I drew a little picture of a woman weeping tenderly, with a friend patting her on the back and a thought bubble from the friend's head that says "the sadness of a shoe that does not fit". So hopefully the woman who opens the box to put the return through will get a little laugh out of that at least.

Goodbye, little yellow shoe. I loved you.