Random shoes

There are many species of shoes: dancing shoes, running shoes, safety shoes, fancy shoes, comfy shoes...and so on. And there are random shoes. Random shoes are the solitary strays on the side of the road; the freakish pairs flung over high wires in the middle of the street; the leftovers in the lost and found bin of elementary schools everywhere. This was brought to mind yesterday, in the Chapters parkinglot, where I spied a sad brown loafer. It looked limp and neglected, and certainly had spent the better part of the winter buried in snow. Now it is merely part of the Spring detritus we expect at this time of year - from dress shoe to flotsam.

Whenever I come across a random shoe, I try to imagine how it came to be there. With this particular lost loafer, did a man back in January think he could sprint into Starbucks for a quick coffee, in his light leather, but the extreme snow drifts got the better of him, sucking the shoe right off his foot as he leapt back into the van? Perhaps it was snowing so ferociously that night that he daren't risk getting back out to search for it, and so gave it up for lost.

No matter the tale I spin for myself, I can never manage to come up with a convincing scenario. It's a baffling species, the random shoe. I wonder if there have ever been zoological studies conducted? I'd like to know more, myself.