Someone Somewhere is Walking Around Half-Shoed

There are many Great Mysteries of Life: Sasquatch, brain freeze, the Sphinx, disappearing socks in the dryer, the Loch Ness Monster, the moving rocks of Death Valley. But the greatest mystery of them all has to do with shoes. Namely, single shoes discarded in completely random places.

When I lived in New York, I used to see pairs of shoes dangling from the telephone lines. I used to think, in my adolescent haze, that they got there through some cosmic process, like osmosis. (Which really isn't cosmic as much as it biologic. Biological. Whatever.) My big brother, ever wise, told me that they were signs of gang activity, and that every time I saw a pair of shoes on a wire, I could be certain that someone died there. I would see those shoes everywhere, and my child's heart would think about the person who had ceased to be under those wires. I thought a lot about death because of those shoes.

I continued to believe this Shoe-As-Gang-Sign-Phenomena until last year when I referenced this fact in a conversation and my big brother, ever the liar, laughingly told me that he had lied about that. I Googled it to confirm. He did lie. Those shoes be an urban legend, y'all.

[Internal Thought --> Gosh, I wish I had Snopes.com as a child. What fears I would have been saved. (i.e. hyperdermics in theater cushions, losing kidneys at frat parties, KFC serving intravenously-fed genetically mutated chickens to its patrons, etc.)]

But the shoes on the wire is not what bothers me now, but rather those completely random shoes on the side of the road. There is always one, laying forlornly on the shoulder or in the gutter, its partner long lost to the Great Big World of Shoelessness. How is it that these shoes come to be there? Has someone unwittingly thrown their shoe out the window? Or perhaps tossing footwear is a form of political protest? ("I will NOT pay my taxes! Take THAT, you political scumsuckers!" *throws shoe*) And why just one shoe? One is not good without the other (that's why they're sold in pairs), and if the discarding of the shoe is indeed an act of protest, wouldn't throwing TWO be more dramatic? ("Take that! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND that!!" *throwing shoe 1, throwing shoe 2*)

But this anger-driven explanation isn't in keeping with my usually positive and cheery outlook on life.* I'd like to think that the shoe just wandered off when someone left the door open, and that its owner, desperate to return it to its mate, is standing outside calling, "Here, left Nike Air Structure Triax 9! Here boy!" Maybe even making MISSING posters: "Have you seen this shoe? Reward: $5."

And somewhere (as in the side of Route 97 towards Annapolis), ever so slowly and only when no one is looking, that shoe is making its way back home like the moving rocks of Death Valley. Painstakingly, secretly, mysteriously and leaving nothing behind but a line in the sand.

*Those of you who know me need not be told that this was Sarcasm. Those who don't know me? That was Sarcasm. I ain't no Pollyanna, yo.