The Shoe Store

As I've mentioned, I live in a rural area. One weekend, my parents came to visit, and after two days of dawn to dusk activities, we hit a lull in the late afternoon. My mom suggested we go get my dad some new tennis shoes.

Also, as mentioned, my town does have a mall. It's probably the only mall within a four hour radius, and it has a Cabela's in it, so my husband was excited to go.

We drove to the mall, my dad wondering how he somehow drove across a mountain range to go to a mall to buy shoes, and parked in the Cabela's lot, my husband parking away from the cart return because he knew it wasn't worth the rant he would incur if he parked my car next to it.

After we got out of Cabela's, we made it to the sporting goods store. My dad went to the shoe section and tried on a pair of all black athletic shoes.

"I can wear these for formal occasions," he told me.

His white socks were so bright against the black shoe. "You can get some black socks if you're going to do that," I told him.

"Oh no. These socks are perfectly fine for formal occasions."

"Look at this," my husband said, pulling me away from my dad; my mom was insisting he try another pair anyway.

"What?" I asked.

My husband pointed to the wall, which displayed dozens of shoes. "Look. These are all the same shoes, just in different colors. Do they think we are stupid?"

Two things to note here. One, my husband, at one point in his life, both worked at a grocery store and a shoe store. Earlier that day we had been in a fancy grocery store and he came to find me and show me how they had thirty-five dollar bottles of maple syrup displayed precariously on a quaint, but structurally unsound, crate above a stairwell.

"I don't even want to think about what happens when that falls. The price. The mess. That is some high quality, very viscous syrup. And, the stairs. Totally unsafe."

So, when we go into both grocery stores and shoe stores alike, my husband is judgy.

Second thing. My husband has a degree in geology. He was a TA for an intro class where he was renowned as the guy who, if you took a interestingly colored rock to him and asked him what kind it was, he would take the rock and throw it back into the wild and yell, COLOR IS MEANINGLESS.

Joke's on him, he married me, who has color synesthesia regarding words and emotions. Turns out the universe is just.

But back to the wall of shoes which were the same style but different colors.

"This is meaningless!" My husband was ranting at the wall, arms waving. "Look. This is the same, this is the same, this is the same..."

"You know what bothers me?" I said, looking past the shoes and at the walls, on which hung huge photos of professional male athletes.

"What?"

"The men's wall of shoes is filled with photos of professional athletes, and look at the women's..." He followed me to the women's section. "It has photos of crosswalks on it."

And indeed, not only was the kids section shoe-horned into the women's section, but most of the giant photos taking up space on the women's wall were just photos of asphalt and crosswalks.

"Yeah, but look," my husband said. "Here we go again. This wall is nothing but the same shoe... Except these. These are different styles in all black."

Then his voice changed. And it was like seeing a train wreck in slow motion. I watched my husband form the words, while his body started to recoil. He knew he shouldn't be saying what he was saying, yet, he did anyway.

"Probably because women are mostly waitresses..."

His arms crossed his body in the ultimate defensive move, his body curling forward, not because I hit him, but because he knew he deserved to be hit, and expected to be hit. Instead, I just leveled a flat stare at him and he was unable to finish the sentence.

Finally, after dancing around like he'd been stung by a horde of bees, he managed, his voice high, "It's fucked. They should have more female athlete photos over here."

"Correct," I said.

"But still, they think we can't tell that these are all the same..."

"THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE," I said.

And, being the mostly smart man he is, he agreed with me.