In college, I had a crippling addiction to cheap shoes.
Like the ones that don’t cost more than two dollars, and are usually held together by watery glue and a prayer from some faceless temu seller.
I actually thought this was punk, a little anti-capitalist. A rejection of the tyranny of Birkenstocks.
Not that I wasn’t otherwise dressed head-to-(not)-toe in Zara.
But when it came to shoes.. they’re just… shoes. Thingamajigs for your feet.
Literally, who cares about their feet?
Cut to me, sprinting across campus in full academic panic. Two classes, a literal mile apart, and five minutes to make it.
Panting, backpack slapping against my back, my Shein flats making this awful attention-seeking claack claack against the pavement.
And my right foot rips clean through the sandal, and my ankle tears into where my toes should normally be.
Now remember, I’m running.
So my ankle folds into itself, and before I know it, I’m in a tragic half-split—one leg stretched, the other buckling like a newborn deer—until I land, kneeling on the asphalt.
In the middle of campus.
But I didn’t learn my lesson there.
Enter: a sparkly sandal from Aliexpress, purchased with the confidence of a woman who had just kissed the pavement.
Stuffing my feet into it and proudly strutting into some shady college bar with all my friends.
It’s a Saturday, the bar is crowded, and the floor is sticky with all kinds of boisterous liquids.
And as we elbow our way through the throng of college kids, my sandal fuses to the floor.
Ok, no problem.
I yank my leg up to free my foot.
And half the sole of this sandal comes off.
The front of my shoe is now just hanging open, like the slack-jaw of a Sesame Street character.
Problem. But luckily for me, the queen of solutions herself, my friend Shyla Minocha was right there. We teeter to the bar, and she asks for a stapler.
I squat on the least disgusting part of the floor and start stapling like I’m Meredith Grey on her first sutures appointment.
It still took me a few years to give up my cheap footwear addiction.
But now I own two pairs of Birkinstocks.
And a stapler, just in case.