Winging It With One Shoe At The Grocery Store

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The other day I arrived at the entrance to my local grocery store with one shoe on, one shoe off. Just twenty yards prior, the strap of my left flip-flop pulled out of the sole and now was more wiggly noodle than solid apparatus.

I had no spare shoes in the car. I had to get a prescription waiting for me at the pharmacy inside. I figured going barefoot in a grocery store might be illegal, or at least against the rules of the store, so what to do?

I hemmed and hawed. The pharmacy closed in half an hour — no time to drive home to get another pair of shoes. I was in a bind.

I took a deep breath. I was going to get that prescription if it put me in Health Department jail. I’ve had a clean shoe record my whole life, so maybe they’d only give me a few nights in the slammer. Or maybe community service cleaning people’s shoes.

I walked inside with only one plan — control where people looked. Once I picked up my medicine, I’d head straight for the tape aisle and fix the shoe. No harm, no foul.

My strategy was to keep all eyes on my face. I summoned all the life in my body and beamed it out of my face — eyes, smile, eyebrows. “No, please, you go first,” I said as I let people push their cart before mine — as my foot sat bare naked below.

I know people wear far less and legally so, but I didn’t think of these things. Maybe that’s because the strange feeling of having one clad foot and one naked gives you the strangest kind of off-kilter.

Nobody in that store would have cared if I’d had three-foot platform shoes on, tortilla shoes, or no shoes. It’s not one of the world’s concerns. But remember, we’re talking about me. I’ve worn shoes in public my whole life. Having one foot utterly vulnerable to the harsh, cruel world of grocery store floors is a jolt from everything I’ve ever known.

I hobbled to the pharmacy, walked to the counter, purse in one hand, flip-flop in the other, and gave them my name. After I paid, as they were about to close their door, I told the pharmacy team my story. “I have no idea if I’m allowed to be here like this, but I’m going straight to the tape section to fix this shoe!”

They laughed hysterically. Maybe a naked foot is more comedy than I realized.

I hobbled on in search of duct tape, and there they were, off in the distance, stacks of them, waiting to save me. I wouldn’t be arrested and carted off like in the movies, my legs trailing behind me, tops of feet dragging along the ground — in my case, one shoe on, one shoe off. Instead, I opened the red duct tape and fixed my flip-flop, albeit temporarily. Soon, I was off to the yogurt and carrots, the check-out line, and my escape.

Everything worked out. I winged it and made it through. The tape failed once I got to my car. The flip-flops are in the trash. I survived.

Later I learned there is no law against going barefoot in a store in the U.S. That may be, but it’s still cold on the soles.

This is a silly story, but it’s about a real subject — winging it when you least expect it. Sometimes life throws us curve balls and we must solve problems we don’t want to — but fully can — on the fly. Sometimes, like in the case of the broken flip-flop, the curve balls are far less consequential than we perceive them to be.

Sometimes the jolt to our expectation of how life will go is what magnifies our response to a situation. For me, humor helps in these circumstances. Or shrugging. Or saying, “Oh well.”

When you think about it, most of the time things work out either fine, better, or we gain useful data for future planning. But we worry about something going wrong anyway. This is a natural human response to being prepared — a negative motivator (fear) to keep us from lounging through life. Yet, it’s possible to be prepared and not worry so much.

I sound like a wise woman, don’t I? Someone who has the answers. I suppose I have answers, but I don’t always use them on the final exam of my life. I worry like anybody else who wears flip-flops.

Which is why I’m going to talk myself down off the ledge right here, right now with you.

My adult sons left yesterday for Seattle on business. They’ll be there for a week. They work for the same company. They make a good living. They are smart and wise and measured. They are kind and not big risk-takers. They are able to travel without my worry. In fact, they do travel without my worry because I don’t let them know about it, except to text them yesterday evening, “How’s everything going? Did you land yet?”

“Yeah otw to hotel.”

That’s all I’ll hear from them until I text them before they leave to come home: When does your flight land?

If they lose their cell phone, they’ll buy a new one. If their Uber fails to show, they’ll book another one. If they say the wrong thing at the wrong time, they’ll learn. It will all be a great experience, for better or worse. And, if this is so, then is there truly a better and worse?

My brand of worry centers around my kids. Your brand of worry might have a different flair, a different style. It’s all the same concern about the unexpected, and it all fails to consider how typical it is for us to wing it and make it out just fine.

Certainly, not all problems resolve well. Not all are broken flip-flop comedy shows. But numbers matter, and the statistics of our lives show us that when the unexpected happens, we make out fine, better, or different — not terribly worse.

Then, as Life will have it, the very next day I arrived at the gym with my music player low on battery despite thinking otherwise. This meant no cardio since I desperately need music for that. At first, I thought, Arrgh! What a waste of a trip! But then I got a grip and implemented the old Duct Tape Method for Winging It. I made my rounds in the weight room, tried out new machines, lifted more than usual, discovered how weak I’d gotten, and felt a new motivation to start lifting more.

What kind of serendipity is that? The best kind.

Thank you, broken shoe. Thank you, low battery. Thank you to all the unexpected gifts that have come along like this. You’ve made me who I am as much as the expectations I had otherwise. The unexpected and expected — you make a great team.

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Hope you're well, friends.