The other day I was shopping at Marshall’s and was perusing the clearance shoe section. I found a super-cute pair of tall black boots with a gold zipper embellishment. They were way cheap, so I decided to try one on. So, I’m sitting down on the teeny-tiny chair, squeezing my lower leg into said boot and everything starts out pretty much as one would expect when trying on a boot. I stand up and look in the little slanted shoe mirror. It’s cute, but not the most comfortable. Probably not very practical for work. So I sit down to take it off. And it WON’T. COME. OFF. I tug at the super cute gold zipper, which refuses to budge. I abandon that strategy and pull at the boot with all of my might. Ugh…that doesn’t work either. I resume messing with the zipper, which again fails me. By this time, my panic is escalating and I’m sweating. I’m in full on boot-claustrophobia hell!
Then a Marshall’s employee walks past me. I flag her down, trying to look like I’m not about to cut my own leg off to escape the boot. “Hi there…I’m sorry…I’m just having a little trouble getting this boot off.” She was very kind, but was most likely thinking, “What sort of a dum dum can’t get a boot off?”
She sits down in front of me and tries the zipper too. No luck. She gets a bewildered look on her face and at that point I feel a little less stupid and start to believe that there is a boot conspiracy happening BECAUSE EVEN THE MARSHALL’S GIRL IS STUMPED. We decide that the next course of action is for her to grab the boot and PULL. So I throw my leg out straight, hold on to my little chair and she pulls with all of her might. My knuckles are white and my sweaty hands are slipping off of the plastic chair. The boot does not budge. At this point, my temperature is 500 degrees, my heart rate is 200, I am diaphoretic and on the verge of passing out. As I am looking for something sharp to amputate my leg with, she calls over another employee to help. After the two of them again tried to pull the boot off, I noticed a little piece of metal on the inside of the boot that I hadn’t seen before.
A second zipper.
A freaking hidden, second zipper.
That gold zipper? That was a decoration. A decoy for stupid people.
I slowly and casually unzip the hidden zipper. And then take the boot off like a normal human being.
We all breathe a sigh of relief. Me because I escaped the boot, not having to chew my leg off. Them because they were finally done dealing with the lunatic in the shoe department.
drbartlettpear.com 