Put Your Right Shoe In And Toss It Out the Window

I had brought the wrong shoes.

That was the first thought that hit me as my mother’s green SUV pulled up beside the tall brick dorm building. These shoes were completely wrong in every single way. They were too high, too flashy. There was too much going on with them. They didn’t fit in at all.

I sat in the car for a moment, leaning against the cool beige leather of my seat. There were two guys outside and I looked over at them. They were both clad in khaki shorts with sport event t-shirts. One’s read [College] Football while the others merely said [Mascot]. Upon their feet they had leather flip-flops, Rainbows. They were the same kind I had worn all through high school. I had a pair of them sitting next to me. Slowly, I inhaled.

“I’m going to wear my Rainbows,” I said to my mom. She looked at me.

“Your heels match.”

“Yeah but they don’t match this.” I waved my arm around, trying to encompass my surroundings. The magnolia trees were tall and old. The house across the street from the dorm seemed like it was waiting for Scarlett O’Hara to come running up the steps, shouting about how those damn Yankees were going to ruin everything. Flowers bloomed in colorful patches, planted in the same location year after year. How could I explain a pair of black fringed high heels to Scarlett O’Hara? She might understand making a dress out of a curtain but that was only when the situation called for it. Even if she was a fashionista in her day, I don’t think she’d encourage my particular choice of footwear, at least not for this occasion.

I leaned over to slide them off, undoing the clasps on both. Once they were off, I unceremoniously dumped them in to my green duffle bag. They landed on top of my charger with a resounding thud. While my mom watched, I slipped on my high school flip-flops and sent a text to my high school friend.

“Hey, I’m outside!” It read.

Pulling the bag onto my shoulder and with a quick hug goodbye to my mom, I walked outside and stood beneath a magnolia tree. The thick green leaves looked like they were made from wax.

After a few minutes, she was outside and showing me around her campus. We walked with another of our old friends, Blondie, who told us stories about life with her boyfriend. They caught me up on all the gossip. Did I know that Friend and My Ex-Boyfriend were getting an apartment together next year? One bedroom. And they’ve only been dating for four months. How scandalous.

I listened, learning about these people I’d spent so much time with. We laughed, a lot, as we walked to the Greek store. It wasn’t, as I had originally believed, a Greek food store but instead consisted of various sorority and fraternity paraphernalia. Blondie bought some items while my friend and I gazed around.

We spent the day together, adding in more and more old friends. At one point, it seemed like my whole graduating class had gathered together to reminisce and joke about the old days. Every now and then someone would mention a new college friend but it always circled back to IB. We had all grown up but no one had changed, or so it seemed.

Then, at night, I was given a tour of the dorms. I saw almost everyone’s rooms and compared them to their bedrooms back home. Some were the same, crowded and homey, while others seemed so different from what I had expected. Either way, it was their home.

The next day, as I was getting ready to go home, I saw a pair of similar high heels to the ones I had wanted to wear. The girl wearing them had hidden most of them under a pair of long jeans but I saw the similarities. My friend, who had spent most of my visit pointing out what was acceptable at their college and what wasn’t, elbowed me.

“Those shoes? So not okay. See how weird she looks?”

I had brought the wrong shoes.

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I wrote this back in the Spring for the same class this was written for. I have a few other stories and I’ll try and keep posting them so my bloggie dear doesn’t die.