Once upon a time, there was a princess who needed a new pair of shoes, and not just any ordinary pair would do.
You see, the princess also worked as a teacher, and was often on her feet, so the shoes needed to be comfortable. At the same time, the princess felt her youth slipping away with each passing day, so she desired to look cool. The greatest challenge of all: accommodating her nascent bunions.
Yes, bunions! For even princesses can get them, especially after they turn forty.
Where would she find such special footwear?
Her journey began at the local comfy-shoe shoppe, where a kind man working on commission helped her try on clogs, which the princess used to wear in college. At a certain point, those college clogs had started to hurt, so the princess stopped wearing them, but who knows—maybe clogs’ fundamental design had changed in the intervening years?
She chanted, “Clogs, clogs, one, two, three—will you pretty please fit me?” Then she slipped them on. But one size was too big. The other was too small.
“Do they come in half sizes?” she asked the kind man.
“No,” he said, sadly shaking his head.
The princess convinced herself that the too-tight pair would eventually stretch sufficiently, despite that not being how shoes work in any reality, not even fantasy ones.
So she bought the clogs and wore them around her tiny, one-room castle, and up and down its stairs, hoping that they would loosen. But her feet were in pain and she could ignore it no more. She brought the shoes back to the shoppe, ashamedly avoiding eye contact with the kind man who had helped her. Never again could the princess return to Ye Olde Shoes.
Continuing on her quest, the princess visited the town square, singing, “Comfy shoes for wide feet—shall I find them on this street?” A cook popped his head out of a tavern window and said, “Try mine! They are like clogs, but with holes everywhere, so they look like they are made of cheese. I wear them with stockings, and plug the holes with fun little buttons.”
The princess was intrigued, but she shook her head. She needed cool shoes, not button-y cheese shoes.
Then the princess went to the woods, where she met a witch. The witch’s shoes looked practical and were purple, the princess’s favorite color. Were these the perfect shoes?
“Mine are grounding shoes,” the witch said. “They have room for your toes to splay, because the toe box is wide, and they’re supposed to feel like you’re barefoot, so they have no arch support.”
“Dear me!” the princess cried. Wide toe boxes were intriguing—would they leave room for emergent princess bunions? But the barefoot thing sounded ominous.
The princess started noticing many ornate posters around town advertising shoes with wide toe boxes that looked like toddler shoes for adults. Each placard depicted a middle-aged princess casually wearing these shoes in a garden or barn. “For the princess with wide feet and a day job, behold the ideal shoe,” one poster proclaimed.
Now the princess felt weirdly seen. She was tempted to try these toddler shoes, for, she had to admit, she liked that kind of stuff.
But when she looked more closely at one poster, she saw that someone had scrawled on it, “These made my shins throb. Sadly, will be returning.”
“How can shoes look so cute and feel so very bad?” the princess said with a sigh.
Weary from her search, the princess arrived at a shoe shoppe specializing in the plain, extra-thick-soled kind of footwear that the king and queen wore, as recommended by their royal podiatrist.
“Chunky shoes, with extra support, I resist no more, I open the door, what will I find in this fine store?” chanted the princess.
She tried on a pair of black leather lace-up shoes. When she put her foot inside, she felt no pinching—no pain whatsoever. No question about it: the princess had found her cool yet comfortable shoes. Perhaps they had a geek-chic flair?
“How much?” she asked the salesperson, who replied with an amount that she was not aware could be a price for shoes. So the princess thanked the salesperson and found a pair of those same exact shoes at a second-hand shoppe, lightly worn, for a mere ten shillings. And she and her feet lived happily ever after. ♦
