Lonely Shoes

Why is it that, when you see a pair of shoes sitting on the ground in a parking lot, you wonder which homeless guy forgot to throw his sleeping shoes in his Safeway cart before he went to buy a 40 of Alberta Vodka, but when you see just ONE shoe sitting on the ground in a parking lot, you feel sad. It's like you know what the shoe is going through, it's been separated from its other half, its life could now never possibly be complete again, unless it is reunited with its best friend and counterpart. Maybe we feel sad because even a pair of disgusting homeless guy shoes are useful; they have some purpose in the world, even if that purpose is to warm the disease ridden, festering, wart laden, pustuled, pockmarked, overly-moist-but-still-cracking-from-dryness, toenails-in-every-direction feet of a homeless man. The solitary shoe is not useful. It's like half of a person. But not the top, or bottom half, which arguably could function in some half-decent manner (puntastic), but more like the left and right half, neither able to perform any useful function without the other, because they are missing necessary functional parts (Here I'm envisioning some man who has been cut completely in half, from head to toe, probably by a massive Spartan with a really sharp sword. Yeah, I saw 300). For instance, after losing your legs in a horrendous accident, you can still function as a human being. And what many of us men wouldn't give to have the bottom half of Britney Spears. Especially after she shaved her head - it might now in fact be more useful than Britney Spears as a whole. Hmmm...

Sorry, what the hell was I talking about? Right. In the same light as a north-south cleaved corpse, one shoe is utterly useless and this is why we feel sorry for it, as we might for a lost puppy. Especially if the puppy had also been cleaved completely in half by a massive Spartan man who's abs alone weigh two hundred pounds. Man, 300 was great.

Talking about feeling sad for shoes reminds me of that IKEA commercialm where the Swedish guy berates you for feeling sorry for the lamp which was taken out with the garbage when a new lamp was purchased at IKEA. Analogously, we are all idiots for feeling sorry for the solitary shoe. What can I say - the commercial is just right. You might feel sorry for the solitary shoe; but that's because you're crazy.

Spiker