New year
I tried to be strategic about New Year's Eve. I had a bunch of places to walk to during the afternoon and evening, so I actually brought along a bag with comfortable shoes and other supplies. I was feeling pretty good about this, changing my shoes in various lobbies while friendly doormen gave me advice about how I looked.
But then it all went wrong.
At one of the places, we were warmly but firmly told to remove our shoes in the foyer before coming all the way inside the apartment. I cooperated, stashing my shoes near my bag. At some point I looked at my watch and saw it was time to move on to the next place. I said goodbye and walked away, wearing my walking-between-parties shoes.
When I got to the next place (which was many blocks away), I started to go through the familiar shoe ritual, this time with another doorman — only to find that I had taken someone else's shoes from the no-shoes-allowed apartment. These shoes looked just like my shoes. Except that they were several sizes smaller. And someone else, behind me in the night, was stranded without her shoes.
What to do?
I was stuck. The doorman laughed. I called the no-shoes-allowed apartment and the hostess made an entire party game out of asking people if they were missing any shoes. I did my best to act resilient and perky, although to tell you the truth I was getting pretty tired at this point. I went up to the new party in my sensible walking shoes (not feeling good about that) and stayed for a while. I couldn't stay long because, well, I had snagged someone else's shoes.
I left and went back to the no-shoes-allowed apartment, where I was greeted with quite a few shoe-based puns. Sigh. Of course, the woman whose shoes I had walked off with hadn't even noticed, because she hadn't tried to leave.
Moral: Don't plan too much.
Happy new year to all.
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