Everyone needs the right shoes
An amazing thing happened last weekend. I was in the shoe store, hunting for work shoes. It was the type of shoe store where they pay great attention to measuring your feet and describe to you in detail the technical construction of each shoe. All the shoes are ergonomically correct. I tried on a pair of suede sneakers.
"Not right," I said. "These ones don’t make me look older."
A gray-haired woman sitting nearby laughed. "Maybe you could dye your hair gray!" she said.
Another customer asked why I was trying to look older– was it for my job? "That’s right," I said. "I’m trying to look more like a professor."
"Oh, are you a professor?" asked the gray-haired woman. "So am I."
I explained that I was almost a professor, starting in the fall. We started to chat. She told me her name. I realized that she was actually a Very Important Female Professor, someone whose name I knew, who I had read about several times in our university newspaper. She showed me the shoes she was trying on.
"I’m trying to look more authoritative," she said. I found it funny (and somehow comforting) that Very Important Female Professor had exactly the same goals for her shoes as I did. We went about buying our shoes, and chatted some more. On the way out, she paused. "Email me if you want to have lunch some time," she said.
So I did.
That is very cool!
Comment by sciencegirl — March 6, 2008 @ 5:34 am
Men network in the sauna, women meet in the shoestores! Great story, hope you’ll get something productive out of it!
Comment by hypoglycemiagirl — March 6, 2008 @ 9:54 am
Sounds great. But remember that there may be a positive correlation between people who don’t respect your authority and people who don’t notice shoes.
Comment by Lab Lemming — March 7, 2008 @ 12:28 am
I wonder. That would make a good research study.
Comment by drshellie — March 7, 2008 @ 2:18 am
That’s neat!
Comment by working — March 9, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
Isn’t it funny how small the world can be sometimes?
Comment by Mad Chemist Chick — March 13, 2008 @ 3:54 am