Red Shoes

I bought a pair of high heeled shoes the other day – tomato red and spiky. They're really great shoes. Very sexy.

If this were a romance novel, my husband would take one look at me in those shoes, throw me over his shoulder, and search out the nearest flat surface.

Sigh.

The reality is that my husband is great at rocking my world, but it doesn't have anything to do with sexy shoes. At least not so far. And frankly, if things like slutty shoes were important to him, he should have married someone else, someone who wouldn't have waited this long to get around to buying some.

So, I've been trying to imagine how he'll react when he gets a look at these amazing shoes. He may go all Neanderthal, but I kind of doubt it. I can't help but think he's more likely to get very, very tense, the same kind of tense that men get when their wives ask them if these pants make me look fat, only probably a little worse, because he will have no prior experience to guide him. Face it, the right answer is "no" or even "NO!" And any man who has ever had even a little time to think about it knows that, or at least he'll know it the second time he's asked.
 
But here's a situation my husband's unlikely to have anticipated, and where he has no prior experience to guide him. A little marital landmine. It almost makes me feel a bit sorry for him.

In fact, I bought the shoes for an event that won't take place for another month, so it's quite possible that my husband's first glimpse of them will be on the Visa bill. I have to think that right off the bat he'll have the wrong reaction, even though that first glimpse will probably set his heart to racing.

When he does see the shoes, on me, he will probably appreciate that my legs look great. But it's not like this is the first time he's ever seen me. We've been together for twenty odd years. He's seen me looking great before. He's also seen me cleaning the garage. He's seen me puttering around the kitchen in sweats. He's seen me with some seriously scary bed head. He's seen me with the stomach flu.

He has seen me delivering a baby.

Obviously I'm lucky that there's more to our mutual attraction than the visual. I heard from one man (for the record – someone else's husband, not mine) that seeing a baby get delivered looks a lot like seeing a deer get gutted. Can one pair of red shoes really counteract a visual like that?

And of course my husband knows me. He knows I don't often wear impractical shoes. He'll probably be wondering how the heck I'll be able to stand in them all night long. He may worry that I'm going to sprain an ankle or dislocate a hip, and it won't only be because he knows he'll be the one who has to lug the groceries in from the car while I'm recuperating. It will also be because, you know, he loves me.

To compound the problem, he'll probably have to let me into his office to change out of my sneakers before the event, because the heels on these shoes are so high and spiky that I couldn't possibly wear them to drive the car, much less to walk across a parking lot of any size.

And it won't help matters that I didn't buy them to go on a hot date. I bought the shoes to match an outfit I'm wearing to an event where we'll be playing host and hostess, standing around making small talk, drinking wine from plastic cups and listening to speeches. By the end of the night my feet will be aching, and I'll be dying to get home, take off the shoes and hurl them into the back of the closet.

It'll be totally worth it though. They're really great shoes. Just ask my husband.