A Coupla Four-Letter "S"-words

I've always heard that only boring people get bored--I'm not sure I've ever believed it, but, just in case, I'm always out there making my own entertainment.

For the past month or so, I've been conducting an informal sociological experiment involving my first four-letter "S"-word: shoes. Granted, shoes is actually five letters, but its root is four so give me a little leeway. (Notice I didn't say "allow me poetic license." That's because I don't want to get anyone's hopes up regarding the literary merit of this post.)

As I've mentioned, I hate, hate, hate shoes. One of the few perks of my job is that I'm allowed to wear pretty much any kind of shoes I want--in fact, as long as I have shoes on when I wait on customers, I'm even allowed to go barefoot in the backroom. In the interest of convenience, I've been wearing flip-flops all summer--slip on, kick off, they're a thing of beauty. (Or as a much a thing of beauty as you could expect something made of recycled tires to be.) As the leaves started to change and the temperature to drop, I hated to give up the foot freedom of the summer so I continued with the flip-flops even as my wardrobe went from short sleeves to sweaters and then even my coat.

After the first three people--friends, acquaintances, total strangers--looked at me like I might be criminally insane and said, "Aren't your feet cold?" I decided to push the issue and keep track of how many people just couldn't resist commenting (out loud!) on my footwear choices. For the last week or so, I've been wearing my heavy winter coat and even sometimes putting up my hood against the chill and still my little piggies have been poking out of my flip-flops for all the world to see.

In addition to tabulating the responses of total strangers, I've been reveling in the fact that Cranky Boss Lady can barely stand that I'm still wearing flip-flops. She says to me every other day, "Isn't it time for the real shoes yet?" She can barely stand it--and she knows she can't suddenly pull rank on me after letting me wear them all summer. There's no compelling, boss-like reason for her to suddenly be concerned and really the only reason it's bothering her is because she wants to be the boss of me and not just my boss. I was thinking it was a very passive-aggressive thing I was doing, continuing to wear these drugstore flip-flops, then it hit me that since I'm actually doing something--wearing the shoes--it's really aggressive-aggressive. Still, I'm pretty okay with that.

But Thursday night, my resolve was put to the test by the other four-letter "S"-word for today: SNOW. When I peeked out the window and saw the white stuff--just a dusting, but still, I knew I would have to cave and drag out my sneakers, I was disappointed that my fun had ended so soon. I was really looking forward to the fuzzy Santa hat* I wear at work every year topped off (or bottomed off?) by a pair of black, recycled-tire flip-flops with my ice-blue toes sticking out!

*Lest you think I'm a whole other sort of dork than I actually am, my fuzzy Santa hat is royal purple plush with a leopard-print cuff and a fuzzy white pom-pom.