Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Graham's mismatched shoes

My apologies to those of you who read this yesterday, I thought I was saving a draft and accidentally published. Let's consider that a trailer for the actual post.

We took Graham back up to his dorm room Monday night, after I had left work on the early side to take him to Nordstrom at the mall to buy him a nice shirt and pants to match his nice jacket so that he'd be ready for any interview that might come his way this semester. Along with the syringe for irrigating the spaces left by his removed wisdom teeth (another tale yet to be told), he left his good black shoes at home. For some reason he had decided to bring them home for the holidays.

Because Graham hates shopping, his shoes are an old pair of my shoes. In the morning I was gathering them up so Mary could take them to him, I was looking at them and remembered how comfortable they were and actually admiring how passably fashionable they were, especially as I'm in my 50s and don't have to give much of a fuck about what anyone thinks of my fashion sense any more. So I put the left one on.

Strangely, it didn't seem well molded to my foot. Then I looked at it and compared it to its pair mate: it looked much newer. Then I turned them over. This is what they looked like.

Clearly, this was not my shoe. It was, rather... AN IMPOSTOR. But a clever one at that. It is the same model, the same size, just a whole lot younger (not unlike the relationship of Graham to me). 

Did his roommate have the exact same model shoe in the same size? Did they get confused with a team mate's shoe on some Quiz Bowl trip? When asked Graham, not surprisingly, had no idea. We may never solve this mystery, Dear Reader, but we will appoint a Special Counsel to dig in and get to the bottom of it and report back, in the fullness of time.

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