It Was The Shoes, Honest!

Somewhere around 1990, Hubby's favorite uncle died and my brother-in-law deemed me unfit to be taken anywhere. It was my new shoes that caused the problem, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start in the beginning, shall we?

I'm a bit of a plain jane when it comes to clothing and such. Most of the time I gravitate towards comfort and durability when buying new clothing. Daily attire is most likely going to be jeans, T-shirts or sweatshirts depending on the season and sneakers or loafers on my feet. Since there are times when a gal wants to look her best, my closet also included dressier clothing of the kind one might wear to weddings, funerals, and the occassional night out on the town. We dressed for those things back in the day.

While I "cleaned up good" as it says in the song, I had a problem wearing heels for a number of reasons. One being that I have flat feet, and the other being that I seldom wore high heeled shoes. It wasn't that my closet wasn't full of them, it was that they hurt my feet so badly that I simply chose not to wear them. I spent a lot of time and money hunting for just the right dressy shoe. One that had a bit of a heel and didn't cramp my toes to the point of agony.

On one of my many trips to the shoe store I found, to my delight, a demi boot as it was called back then, that was just perfect. Unlike the boot in the image, it had a leather sole and wooden heel. Which I found, to my dismay could cause all kinds of other difficulties. Being totally unaware of those difficulties, I spent a good portion of my paycheck on these babies and took them home to store in my closet until just the right occassion. Which, of course, occurred when Hubby's favorite uncle died.

He lived in a small town about an hours drive south of where we lived. Rather than drive down in Hubby's pick up we decided to ride with Hubby's oldest brother and his wife. My husband is the kind of man who feels things rather deeply and wastes too much effort trying to hide that. Riding with someone else would give me the opportunity of having someone to talk with during the ride. Also, the oldest of the family has a knack of being able to make us all laugh no matter the circumstances, so it was a win all the way around.

I had chosen to wear a black pantsuit and my new, never worn boots went perfectly with my outfit. It was late March, and while there still were patches of ice here and there that I had to walk on, they'd been sanded well so I had no problem.

The funeral and the gathering afterward were held in the church. I was safe from experiencing any slippery mishaps, or so I thought. Shortly before I had to leave, I decided to use the church ladies room. Which had a ceramic tile floor that I stepped onto and promptly lost my footing. It all happened so fast that I was unaware that I was falling untl my derriere actually hit the floor. Hard. Which caused certain choice words to exit my mouth. Not the sort of words that one expects to hear from a lady in a church.

The ladies room was in the basement and since I neither heard nor saw anyone else, I imagined those words went unheard by anyone but the deity the church was dedicated to. Which in my mind was bad enough. I picked myself up, found that nothing was broken, went about my business and returned to the room being used for the gathering.

It appeared to me that all eyes were on me when I entered the room. I thought it an abberration of a guilty mind until I rejoined the family group who were having a laugh at something. It seems that brother-in-law was in the adjoining men's room when I had my mishap. The wall between us was not soundproof so he heard everything I said. As I walked up to him he shook his head and said " We just can't take you anywhere can we?"

I remember very little of what happened after that. It seems to me that Hubby made some sort of strangled noise and needed to help himself to some of the tissues in the boxes placed strategically throughout the room. I remember that it suddenly got very warm in there and I seemed to develop a stuttering problem. I do remember that no one asked me if I was hurt until I mentioned it. A question which did finally get asked in between peals of laughter by Hubby.

Twenty-one years later I have not ever been allowed to forget it. Ever since then any invitation forthcoming from that particular brother-in-law is always, without fail, accompanied by a request to make sure I behave myself. Which I have never failed to do since the funeral 21 years ago. Fortunately Hubby has forgotten the reason behind his brother's cautioning statement, or I'd be seriously tempted to do something else stupid. Like file for a divorce. I can limit the brother-in-law, the husband on the other hand...