It was a Saturday, if memory serves, and I had just bought a book by Dave Barry for $1. Probably it was titled something like Dave Barry Turns blank, blank, and Develops Toilet Tank blank or blight or something like that. I think he is quite funny, but he could take title lessons from Tom Robbins. Maybe as he turns 60, Dave could go with something like Dave Barry Turns Sixty, Develops a Taste for Jitterbug Perfume, and Dates a Cowgirl with the Blues. Imagine how many more readers he could attract! Dave usually manages to make the everyday goofiness of life seem even more goofy. And speaking of goofy, as our story unfolds it was the dying days of the George W. Bush administration. This has nothing to do with anything, except I really like saying, the dying days of the Bush administration. Really, I am trying to get to the point, or at least a dot with delusions of being a dash. I could almost swear an oath that it was Sunday when I went on my little adventure to buy a new pair of shoes, during the dying days of … well, why beat a dead bush. Now, what this has to do with Dave Barry, I’m not sure. I am reasonably certain that Mr. Barry has had on occasion the overwhelming urge to buy a new pair of shoes – even if he is a Pulitzer Prize winner. And for reasons that are forever lost in the fog of memory, I hereby promise that Dave and I had not discussed our shoe buying habits. We would only admit to such under extreme torture. Not the Bush Administration’s definition of torture. In that case, we would end up dead and wouldn’t have any need of shoes, and even less need to talk about buying them.

You must be wondering how this whole thing came to be. I’m a little vague about it myself. It’s almost like a dream. On that dreamy Saturday during the dying days, and as Jackie Gleason might say, while sipping a martini, “How sweet they were!” And on that dreamy Saturday night I talked to my wife on the phone and mentioned that I was in need of a new pair of shoes. She brought up a store called The Big 5. Now this did not sound like real store to me. She assured me that it was a sporting goods store. I did not doubt her for a second, but I hadn’t heard of it and was reasonably certain that I would get lost trying to find it. In fact, without a guide, I can get lost leaving a phone booth. Never heard of phone booths! Well, I’m sorry you’re in the wrong story. Please direct your attention to your left, you’ll see a navy blue curtain, and behind that curtain you’ll find a sign with an arrow that says, ‘Texting’. Just follow that and you’ll safely exit the story. For the rest of you, I’m not a shopper. I’m a looker, who wanders around stores with vague feelings of dread when occasionally I’m seized by a frenzied capitalist impulse and before you know it I own an armadillo hand puppet or navy blue string bikini underwear with Rottweilers on them. I’m sure it’s a syndrome of some kind or at the very least a disorder. Normally, I don’t buy shoes until one or both develop holes through which pebbles the size of what geologists might call boulders may be ensconced. I’m not totally sure what ensconced means, but I like it and it goes well with boulders.

I did manage to find the Big 5. Although I’m not sure it exists in any Non Twilight Zone reality. I expected to see Rod Serling, of Zone fame, standing off to the side, smoking a cigarette, and talking rather melodramatically to the TV audience. Or perhaps talking to Dave Barry, who is walking with a noticeable limp because there is something rather substantial ensconced in his right shoe. I eventually made my way to the shoe section. But not before I am lured to check out the fishing tackle. I don’t fish, but every time I’m in a sporting goods store I feel the irrational impulse to look at fishing poles, lures, hooks, etc. What does ‘fishing tackle’ mean anyway? Is it similar to horses, and ‘tack rooms’. The English language is often a mystery.

Once I discovered the shoe section, if knew I was in the Twilight Zone. Seemingly every shoe in sight was marked down an impossible amount. Shoes that were regularly priced at $54.95 marked down to $17.95. Can’t you just hear the Twilight Zone theme music coming up! Remember now, I’m not a shopper. I began looking for that magical shoe priced at $195.95 marked down to $0.95, and I think I might have found it to, given enough time. But I had better things to do. Well, Dave Barry had better things to do. Eventually, I found a shoe that was regularly $59.95 marked down to $24.95. This seemed like the perfect shoe for me. It spoke my name. Although I couldn’t quite place the accent. It was a marvelous example of modern manufacturing. So modernistic that at any moment I expected the shoe to take off and achieve near Earth orbit. Unfortunately, they didn’t have it in a 7 1/2. I tried on a 8. This might work I thought. With a thick enough sock, and the right attitude. Yeah, it could work. And then Rod whispered into my ear, “They call socks that thick, slippers.”

I finally managed to buy a pair new shoes. Since I was in a daze, the shoe type was a little confusing, something like Cross Dressing Training Shoes or Dr. Soul’s Walking and Hopping Sneakers. I won’t mention how much they were marked down, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. I was beginning to believe that everything would work out right in the end. Then I went for a walk in my new shoes. The left shoe seemed to fit fine, but the right one, which was the one I tried on in the store seemed now to be too narrow. And up ahead wasn’t that Rod Serling again walking with a limp. And if we listen closely we can almost hear what he was saying, listen . . .

“The next time you see Mr. Don Bellinger he’ll probably be limping. Wearing ancient rundown shoes, one with a hole in it and within that hole a significant section of a rock escarpment. We in Television Land don’t know what escarpment means but we like the sound of it. Or, our weary shoe buying Don Quixote might be wearing new shoes, one too narrow and his little toe about to fall off. Such are the joys of our American economy! Makes one long to be a Marxist/Leninist. Well, a Marxist anyway. Lenin didn’t seem to know the definition of torture either. Happy Shoe Shopping, in . . . The Twilight Zone.”