Black And White

This morning, I woke up as I usually do, showered, dressed, looked in the mirror and marveled at how good I looked and stormed out the door to work like every other weekday. Except this wasn’t every other weekday. There I was, crossing the street in front of the office when I looked down and to my horror saw two different shoes on my feet. And not two kind of different shoes where I could imagine making such a mistake, but they were so different that there is no possible way this could have happened. There I was with one sleek white Bikkembergs sneaker and one clunky black Prada shoe. The realization that not only had I walked from my house to the tram stop, sat on the bus for 20 minutes and then walked from the bus station to the office in total ignorance of my early display of Alzheimer’s, but I would have to do the journey in reverse and hope that nobody noticed. I tried to restructure my DNA so that nobody would know it was me and I ran into a colleague of mine who had a huge laugh at my expense. I will get you back one day… Just wait! On my way back home, I scanned the streets looking for others who shared my pain but obviously the coordination gods were smiling on my neighbors this morning and I was the only one, chosen to walk that road alone.

I ran into my house and then could not find the matching shoe to either one of them and panicked even more. I finally fond the matching shiny white one and sped off back to work. I wonder if this is how Cinderella felt when she only had the one glass slipper. Did she walk around her village all mismatched?

And to make matters even worse, this is not the first time such a thing has happened to me. Last summer, I went to meet up with Garad and Adam to go to Media Markt. I walked from my house to theirs, along the canals of Amsterdam, met them, got on the tram then connected to the metro and when we were almost there, I noticed I had on two different shoes. At least they were both white so nobody noticed, but Garad immediately took photos so he could blackmail me at some point in the future. As soon as I am home, I am going to make a sign and put it o my mirror that says “Have you checked your shoes today?”