sole mates

The quote of the day on my Google homepage today was this:

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

-- Fredrich von Schiller

Which reminds me of a little story about a shoe. A perfectly nice kids dress shoe in black. A shoe belonging to the Littlest Carrotstick. A shoe who suddenly found itself very alone last Sunday morning.

The Littlest Carrotstick, in a panic to get to church on time, grabbed the shoe off the laundryroom floor, stuck it on his foot, and then searched frantically all over the laundryroom for its mate.

Its mate was nowhere to be found.

Its mate had gone missing.

In desperation, we searched the entire house, high and low, looking for the black shoes one true love. All for naught. At the last minute, he cast the shoe aside, grabbed his brown dress shoes and ran for the car, ignoring the caustic remarks of the Oldest Carrotstick -- the self-appointed Fashion Police.

The next day, Monday, after the kids were safely off to school -- with no further shoe mishaps -- I finally got around to switching the load of laundry I had started on Saturday from the washer to the dryer.

I went back and forth, from washer to dryer, pulling out wads of wet towels, when suddenly I grabbed a handful of towels with an uncharacteristically hard center. Vigorous shaking disentangled the mess, and one solitary black dress shoe, size 13 1/2, plopped with a sodden thud on the laundryroom floor.

The missing black shoe.

Now nice and clean, and remarkably, not much worse for the wear.

It's probably the only time I've been grateful for cheap fake-leather plastic shoes.