Someday I would like to open a shoe store and call it “Buy the Shoes First!”

A couple of weeks ago, Good Friday, it was, I lucked into two pairs of shoes. The first ones I found were low slip-ons with yellow leather straps over the tops of the feet with little yellow flowers…ah fuck it. Here:

See? They truly shouted at me from the rack. Shoes don’t call to girls with feet my size. They shout like highschool football coaches at the last game of the season, the one against State, when the star quarterback is down with a mysterious, steroid-induced fever and the little nerd who loves football but who just doesn’t have the genetic predisposition to build gargantuan muscles has to be sent in and he doesn’t even have a mouthguard! Who’s looking out for this kid? The COACH, that’s who.

Anyway, since I was shopping for work shoes, the yellow shoes had to be carried around the store for, oh, two hours while I looked for a pair of work shoes. See you could buy one pair and get the second pair for half price and if I could do that then I could buy the yellow shoes for $15! Fifteen! Dollars! Hut!

Eventually my scouring and the scouring of my mother, who believes in shoes as fervently as I, having already found two pairs for herself, paid off and I found the other ones, which are work suitable but still cute and flat and brown and, ok:

because brown is the best colour for toast and damn good for shoes as well.

I brought both pairs of shoes home and commenced worshipping. Saint Aardvark said,

“Sigh,” and I protested,
“But we’re going to a wedding in June! These are perfect June wedding shoes! Look! Yellow!”
“Can you wear yellow before labour day?”
“Shut up.”
“It’s a wedding in Ontario. Are you allowed to wear yellow shoes in Ontario in June? Have you checked the bi-laws?”
“Shut UP. They’re perfect.”

Well, he’s heard that one before but no one is stopping me, no sir because I have never owned yellow shoes and I am so excited! Except that even in the loveliest of families who understand the quirks and stutters of a daughter-in-law like me, one cannot wear JUST yellow shoes to a wedding. One does need, er, some kind of clothing-like attire as well.

As someone who has never owned yellow shoes, do you suppose I own any clothing which could be worn with yellow shoes? Of course not. Yes, that noise you hear is Saint Aardvark gasping for air. He’ll be fine.

Buying the Shoes First ™ is a habit of mine. I bought the shoes first for my own wedding. If I hadn’t bought those shoes, I might not have had a wedding dress! I was looking for a wedding dress for weeks but once I had bought the shoes, everything else fell into place. I bought other shoes first a full two years before I had anything to wear with them. But it was worth it when I did find the perfect dress: handmade by somebody, on the rack in a Value Village in Chilliwack: $10. See? Faith.

Saturday I was in the suburbs again, visiting old buddy Costco for my chips and olive oil and I paid a quick visit to estranged lover Winners. And I found The Dress to go with the yellow shoes. It satisfied all my desires: it had yellow in it (yellow daisies on black silk), it had sparkles (sequins sewn into each daisy’s centre), it had value (dress AND lemon yellow cardigan sweater: $59.99 [and cardigan had sparkly, daisy buttons GOOD GOD]), and it was my size. It fit perfectly. It swung just below the knee. And most amazingly of all, it was strapless and it fit.

I realized as I stepped out of the fitting room to stand in front of the full-length mirror that I had never tried on a strapless dress before. My fear had been, as I think it is for many women who are less then buxom and maybe even those with bosoms, that a dress without straps wouldn’t stay on. That actually wasn’t a problem. It stayed on just fine and it was even comfortable. What I didn’t know until that moment was that the real estate between the top of my bosomettes and the bottom of my chin makes up 3/4s of my torso. With nothing to look at between the dress and my head but a vast prairie of skin, (the tan line didn’t help) I look like an emu. An emu with a fading tan. And no; no necklace in the world would have helped.

I think, aside from the learning possibilities it provides, Buying the Shoes First ™ has a certain structural appeal. With shoes in hand, you know whether or not your feet will be comfortable. You know whether to buy a long or short skirt or whether pants will do. You have a place to start. If you do it the opposite way and try to find the perfect shoes for a particular outfit, you will more likely end up with last minute, too-expensive, very pointy shoes that you can’t wear for walking or dancing or running away from that creepy uncle and your friends/family will have to carry you around and not in a “hoorah! the champion!” way, in a “damnit when did you get so heavy” way. Just saying.

Gah. I’m girled out. Time for some chewing tobacco.