Here is a situation: your man comes home and tells you that he has lost his shoes. You look down and you find that what he says is true. Then you lift your eyes slowly and they settle where they meet his. The expression you are wearing is close to one you would have on when your 5 year old son insists that he wants to drive to the mall, and then he does. Quite obviously, you are in disbelief, and you ask him to stop this silly joke. You begin to head back to the kitchen. But he continues to stand in front of you, looking stunned himself, insisting that he is not joking. “Honey I’m telling you, I lost my shoes!” You fix a gaze on him, trying to bring your scattered mind together to comprehend the words coming out of this nong you’ve allowed into your house.
You are not one to quickly judge people, but this one has surely outdone himself. Loosing shoes? How does a grown human, let alone a father of 4 children, loose the shoes they wear almost everyday of their lives? Shoes with laces! Ai! This one refused to make sense to you.
“How did you loose your shoes?” You demand.
“I don’t know… I … I was seated at my desk, I decided since I wasn’t going to move around a lot, I might as well just free my toes… then when I wanted to take a leak, I couldn’t find them. I stretched my legs and probed under the desk, until, eventually, I found them. Somehow they’d moved to a corner… Funny thing is – now that I remember – they felt raised, and when I walked, everyone looked as though they were holding back a laugh. “
You look frustrated, yet just about to explode. You can feel your skin turning red. “So you have them?” You inquire.
“No,” he responds, looking down as if searching for a story that will redeem him from looking like a complete idiot in front of his wife and everything in the living room where he stood. “I spoke to a man about a horse, then came back and at some point I dozed off. When I woke up, my feet felt light and loose… you know like the feeling you try to describe when you have just taken off your bra after a long day… I put them (feet) together and to my surprise, they touched… as if not separated by leather. I had to look down to confirm. True to my fears, my shoes were missing.”
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You look like you are about to resign from this marriage – in fact, from this life. In an instant, you start to ponder upon your life, unsure about your life choices. How did things unfold so that you ended up here? How did you settle for a man who looses his shoes? Is this the seed that you’re leaving behind? Surely, what sort of people shall your children grow up to be, especially if you genes do not dominate? Leave alone that, what sort of person shall your girlfriends think you are when they ever find out your man lost his shoes like he’s in lower primary? And your mother, won’t she drown herself in wine, blaming herself for not bringing you up well enough to know how to choose a man who carries a solid head on his neck?
“Ah, I honestly don’t know how it happened.” he says, seemingly giving up on his investigation. “Where are my other shoes?” he wonders, because married men never know where anything is. You snap out of your reflections and head into the kitchen shouting, “in the bottom-most drawer on the left side of the closet!” Because that is what married women do – they raise their children, and their husbands too.
Truth is, our guy lost his shoes at the club last night. It was Mato’s birthday. How he ended up not ending up at home is still a mystery. He had promised himself to have only but a few drinks, then head home. Now all he remembers is the lady sitting on his lap, the table full of Gins and Whiskeys, the bucket of water that they poured on Mato and then him using the men’s washroom at the office. The receptionist had seen them walk into the office as they had left the previous evening, only this time they looked as though they’d just been released from prison. Later on that night, our guy checks his WhatsApp and in the office group he finds photos of himself in red heels, walking like a true model and looking back at everyone the way one would when they are wondering why everyone else looks as though they are holding back a laugh.
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