Kudos to my friend Omar for coining that name of my forthcoming book. Or at least a blog posting, for now. Yup, my friends, to those who don’t know (which, really, who are you? everyone knows this slight misery by now), I’m in an orthopedically ostentatious boot. Only one though, lest I really be starting a new trend of Giant Bootedness in the Summertime. I technically have a stress fracture, which means a little piece of one of my metatarsals (foot bone, to those unbeknownst) is broken. How you break a bone in the middle of your foot and nowhere else, I’m not entirely sure, but I tell myself it’s special talent only the booted few can perfect. I’ll have to take a picture of Mr. Boot and post at another point.
It turns out, everyone becomes about 10x’s friendlier when you’re in a boot (and a skirt, making it obvious you’re only wearing one giant moonboot). It’s like that point in the party at 2am after everyone’s had their drinks and strangers start talking, only this time, it’s people on the street, or elevators, or restaurants, during perfectly respectable afternoon hours. (Apparently I think only afternoon hours are respectable.) People say such gems as, “Wha’d you do, kick your boyfriend?” “Man I hated the boot, I had one too, how’d you manage yours?” So everyone has a sympathy story, or wants yours, or just uses it as an excuse to start chatting. Which is actually quite lovely… Giving people excuses to talk to strangers is one of the best byproducts of my having to stumble around in Mr. Boot for weeks. It’s like Mr. Boot and I have become inseparable friends who everyone at this party called the City wants to talk to. It’s…say it with me now…Boot and the City!
(Now, dating in Mr. Boot is a whole other post/novel, which is currently in the works on and being saved for a later debut.)
