I hope you can take a break from your busy holiday activities to help me out. I have been experiencing some strange goings on and I have questions. I've been driving for quite a few years, but lately in my travels I have been seeing something unusual on the side of the road - a single shoe. Now I've seen an occasional shoe before along a freeway, but I've seen at least five shoes in the last two months, just in town! They are all different styles (not flip flops) and I would have to say all mens. Five shoes in two months in Temecula: Maybe that doesn't sound like much but that isn't even the kicker (pun intended). On the way home from Ontario last weekend I saw eight shoes on the side of the road, all in a row, all singles, and all different.
My first question to you is this: How does that shoe get there? Here's one idea. I'm picturing a guy leaving his house barefoot or in socks carrying his precious shoes for whatever reason, he puts them on the roof of his car, gets in and drives away forgetting the shoes, and they fall off. But why is there only one shoe on the roadside? Where is the other one? Are there a group of animals living in the second shoe like in some Jan Brett story? Okay, here's another possible scenario. Two people in a car are driving down the street. The passenger, feeling warm, sticks his feet out the window to capture a cool breeze. Oh no! One of his shoes isn't fastened properly and it flies off.
He would've had to notice and bring it to the driver's attention right? What kind of a friend would not stop an let you get your other shoe? We're not talking about one friend, remember I saw thirteen separate shoes (well I guess the eight in a row could of have come from a terrible fight with footwear or something) but there are at least five mean drivers and five people who need to learn to tie better out there if this is indeed what happened. I'm not convinced, but let's move on.
The second question I must ask: Is this a sign or just a shoe by the road? Signs, I suppose, come to people in various ways. We could now, of course, get into a very long discussion of whether signs exist or not, their meanings if they exist and what one should do with all this knowledge. Let me just save a little time and say I don't know, but I'm a worrier. As a worrier I like to cover all the bases so let's just say the shoe does have a meaning, at least for me. Using the two scenarios above and a dose of holiday spirit I have come up with the following meanings. In the first story the shoe is telling me I need to take good care of my precious things and not take them for granted, they may not always be around. In the second story, I think I am being told to be the kind of friend who would pull over and retrieve someone's shoe even if he or she did have it hanging out of my car and not tied securely.
I will try my best to listen to the shoe. Happy Holidays.
P.S. Oh, even if it was just a shoe by the road it still has a message, Don't Litter.
