silver shoes, throwing stuff out, and the overwhelming trauma of throwing stuff like my silver shoes out

It was the fall of 2008 and I was back to working retail, using a holiday management position at Williams Sonoma as an escape from another job that I would have sold my kidney to get out of, had I known less people at Williams Sonoma and more people on the black organ market.

Picking up a second tenure at Williams Sonoma meant a return to straddling the line between “I’m supposed to be wearing business casual” and “you bitches don’t pay me enough to go out and buy anything that actually qualifies as business casual so I’ll just come to work looking like a child playing dress up instead and you’re going to deal with it. The end.”

It was thanks to one of those throw-things-together-dress-up phases that I bought the silver shoes. Cute, almost flat but with enough of a kitten heel to fancy them up, pointed toes, and, most of all, comfortable as hell. So I wore them. Wore them to Williams Sonoma, wore them on dates, wore them to the grocery store, to lunch, to everyfuckingthing I could wear them to and it was all very “Nicole and the silver shoes, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

I wore them so much, in fact, that they started falling apart. A chip here, a fabric peel there, not enough to be too noticeable but enough to get me complaining about it. “I should probably get new shoes,” I’d say to friends who had better things to do with their lives than give a shit about my shoes. I’d complain and complain, and then I’d keep wearing them anyway. They’d get more and more worn out, I’d complain and complain, and then I’d keep wearing them anyway. Lather, rinse, repeat.

When I moved to San Francisco a few months ago, I told Jamie I was definitely going to get new shoes. “You don’t understand,” I told her, “I’ve had these shoes forever.” And while she didn’t understand at first, you better believe that after 60+ days of living together and hearing about the shoes every single morning, she got it just fine.

“Do you want me to fucking salt them?” she asked, an ode to how I notoriously dump salt on my food at restaurants when I’m full enough to know that I should stop eating, but too weak on self-control to actually do it. I considered her offer, but declined after realizing, sadly, that I’d wear the damn things even if they were full of salt. A seemingly hopeless cause indeed.

It came up again a few weekends ago, the throwing out of the shoes, I mean. I was at a lovely little blogger brunch that would have been even more lovely without my wretched hangover and even more brunch-like without a 10am start time (no Kristin, I’m sorry, I don’t care what you say, TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ISN’T BRUNCH), and we were walking around the Mission, trying to find a bar with an outdoor patio (insert statement about hair of the dog here), and I was mumbling about how my feet were sweating and how it was really time to throw out the silver shoes. Jamie rolled her eyes in a way that said, “stop being the girl who cried shoes,” and Andrea looked down at my feet and was like, “YOU STILL HAVE THOSE FUCKING SHOES?”

That look on her face, the horror on her face, was when I committed. I told everyone that Saturday was going to be the end of the shoes, the last day I ever wore them. I woke up on Sunday and even told Twitter that it going to be the end of the shoes. Except guess what? It wasn’t. Because on Monday I was all, “dkfjgdfklgj” and then put them on anyway and Jamie raised her eyebrows and I was like, “Okay seriously, today is the last day. Say bye bye to the shoes! The shoes are going bye bye! Stop looking at me like that! I promise! I’m throwing them out tonight. BYE BYE.”

But then tonight came and I didn’t do it. And Tuesday came and I didn’t do it then either because I don’t know, I’m sick, okay? I’m sick and I don’t care that they’re torn up and I don’t care that I’ve worn the soles down so much that the kitten heels aren’t kitten-ey and aren’t even heels and I don’t care that the lack of heels makes the shoes so slippery that I almost fall everyday and actually did fall one night last month and I don’t care that they smell weird and and and just leave me alone already.

But, sigh, I do care. So last Wednesday, sad and glorious Wednesday, I realized that it had finally gone from enough to enough is enough to oh my god so much more than enough is enough and I grabbed the shoes and marched out to the trash chute and threw them down before I lost my giant shoe disposal cajones and backed out.

And that was that.

Except that it wasn’t because I’m completely traumatized and I miss my shoes and I tried to replace them but nothing can replace them and I’m not sure what the lesson is here but I definitely haven’t learned it and let’s all have a moment of silence for my fucking silver shoes please okay amen.

Posted in: day to day shenanigans, san francisco, the nicole & jamie show