Intro to Shoe Stories- Each year at the SCWC (Southern California Writers' Conference) we are challenged to write a 250 word story based on a single word. This is one of my favorite things to do at
the conference. It is both maddeningly limiting and also creatively freeing. I can never stop at just one entry. This is one of the two I submitted in 2009. The topic was “shoe”.

Though based on a true incident, it is politically neutral.

Thrown

by Jeff Michaels

The problem was a shoe. A Hush Puppie perhaps. Definitely suede, the kind his professors wore in college. The Hush Puppie made a flat kind of whap as it struck the wall behind him.

He was fast. He’d seen the shoe flying out from the darkened audience area behind the bright lights of the news cameras. He didn’t know it was a shoe. Just something shoe sized flying towards his head. He dodged and watched it whap the wall.

Who throws a shoe? And where were the Secret Service guys?

The problem then became another shoe. Whoever threw his shoe had thrown the other one. Again he ducked. That was when the shoes became a bigger problem. It was penny loafer. He saw the penny.

Polls showed he was not appreciated. Well, they actually showed he was damned unpopular, but he was too deep in denial to acknowledge that. The penny loafer made more of a thud. That would have hurt. Where were the Secret Service guys? And who would wear two different types of shoe to a press conference?

The real problem was the third shoe. A boot, actually, and it really hurt. Knocked back, he fell to his knees. The podium shielded him from the fourth, fifth and sixth shoes, a wing tip, a shiny red pump and a sandal. His wife wore red pumps like that.

He tried to get away. The one that took him down was regulation shiny black and steel toed.

I like to make as many references as I can to the topic word. I think the obliqueness of some of them prevents me from winning.

Stepping In

by Jeff Michaels

Brown and warm.

Soft and pungent. 

I looked at my foot.

Late autumn in Wisconsin on the farm brought back many memories and here was another.

My family laughed at me when I got off the plane. My California flip-flops proved woefully inadequate. It was October. Frost was on the pumpkin.

The scent of Grandma’s shoo-fly pie mingled with the fresh harvested apples and the ever present dairy air. The soft sound of the farrier’s hammer laced the breeze that blew from

the direction of the barn. And cow bells.

The soft sucking sound of Jake’s high rubber boots moved through the muddy path from farm

to field as he followed the cows. He never wanted out the way I wanted out. Our souls were

as different as brothers could be. I wanted to walk my own path. He wanted to fill father’s shoes. My feet liked warm sand and the ocean. Jake actually liked the snow. Boots or skis,

he loved being in the cold and frozen woodlands. His closet was full of footwear and not just

the closet. He had shoes by the front door, shoes by the back, shoes in the barn and all of

them with a different function, but the same goal. Keep his feet warm and dry.

A wave of my hand shooed two flies away from my feet.

Stepping forward, I slid my foot into my other warm, soft, old leather boot. I couldn’t believe

he had kept them.