I want to talk about slippers again. I may have mentioned how disappointed I am in my slippers. Even though I did not pay anything like retail, my Rockport slippers, nevertheless, are expensive slippers as slippers go and I expected them to last more than a year. They haven’t.
To be fair, without letting go of my disappointment, I am hard on my slippers. I wear them to the bus stop every day so if slippers are “house shoes” and manufactured to meet the expectations of something called a house shoe, I probably have little room to complain.
And yet, one would think that if the daily trek over 100 yards of asphalt were really the issue it would show up in wear and tear to the sole of the slipper. But no, the soles of my slippers, which are thick and unhouse shoe-like, the reason I chose them, are in good repair, showing little sign of bus stop travel abuse. The problem is that the uppers are attempting to divorce themselves from the soles, threatening a total separation.
Setting aside my disappointment I began a search for new slippers. My slipper requirements are as follows, in summary: The slipper must have a closed heel. I’m not a member of the rat pack lounging around Frank’s pool and I’m not in the hospital. The slipper must have a substantial sole. Cloth sole slippers are, perhaps, one of the most useless things imaginable unless you have wall-to-wall carpet and never wear your slippers outside the house. If you never wear your slippers outside the house your priorities are askew and we should part company before unfortunate words are uttered. Finally, slippers must be a color that will not readily reveal coffee stains. This one is entirely personal and practical.
It is a good time to shop for slippers if you have a “pickers” mentality like I do when it comes to shopping. As memories of the holidays fade and warmer weather is theoretically possible, slippers move to the clearance racks. By mid-February slippers have been marked down more than once. It is the slipper sweet spot. But not this year. When I found an appropriate pair, they didn’t have my size (which is common). When I found my size, they had such a poor excuse for a sole I would hold them up and ask rhetorically if they were meant to be disposable slippers.
Today I gave up. As I stood in a store holding a pair of weak-soled slippers in my hand and contemplated whether they would last through the bus-stopless summer I suddenly remembered I kept a miracle in my tool box. The miracle in my toolbox is a hot glue gun. Can you think of any problem that a hot glue gun cannot fix? Of course you can’t.
I brought my sturdy soled Rockport slippers with a separation problem down to the basement, fired up the hot glue gun, and then slathered. I glued like nobody’s business and turned a fine looking pair of slippers into a pair of monsters…monsters that will last for the rest of 2015, I’ll wager.
March 2015
Mike Ferguson Writer 