Rip's Choice

My husband and I were on our way out of the Tanger Outlets and I was excitingly sharing the story of my very successful visit to the Easy Spirit Store with him. 

I have such hard-to-fit feet that it is rare that I can take advantage of any of their promotions that involve buying more than one pair of shoes at a time.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve left the store in defeat with just one pair of shoes, unable to find a second pair that fit that I would have been able to buy for half price.

Well, this time Easy Spirit had really thrown down the gauntlet with their Buy Two Pairs, Get One Free promotion.  I found my first pair pretty easily – they were a style I had been eyeing up on line for some time.  After some searching I found a second pair - black loafers- that also fit.  Wow, I actually found two pair of shoes that fit in one shopping trip – talk about impossible dreams.

So now the challenge was on.  If I could, improbably, find a third pair of shoes that day, they would be free.   I searched high. I searched low.  Then my eye fell upon the blue sticker on a shoebox that indicated the shoe inside was a double wide width.  I looked closer.  Eureka!  I had found that most elusive podiatric treasure -a 7 WW shoe.  My actual size.   The shoe fit, and I would wear it.  For free!

So I was sharing this happy story with my husband, who, suddenly, out of the blue, asked me a meaningful question.

“If you could only have one, which would you choose,” he asked, “shoes that fit or World Peace?”

What kind of a question was that???

God forgive me, but my knee jerk response was “Shoes that fit, of course.”  In my defense, he caught me off guard, and I was just coming off a successful shoe-shopping trip.  Just the minute it was out of my mouth, I was struck by that Old Catholic Guilt, and thought perhaps that was the wrong answer.

Maybe I was being selfish.  It’s not all about me, and my ability to walk without pain or stress on my knees.  Maybe I haven’t spent enough time sacrificing my own needs to save the world, although goodness knows that I have spent considerable time and effort trying to keep the peace in my own little corner of the world.

So, which would it be?  Walk the world in peace, or have peace in the world?  This is a harder choice than you might imagine.  Sure, World Peace seems unachievable but believe me, finding comfortable shoes to fit my feet has proved nearly as elusive.

Hey, I’ve got it!  Maybe if everyone in the world had shoes that fit, they would be so much happier and more comfortable that they wouldn’t even feel like fighting anymore, and – voila- we would have World Peace. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make a choice at all.  Maybe shoes that fit are the KEY to World Peace. 

We could have our shoes and wear them, too.