I was perplexed recently. Well, likely more than once, but this particular time was the result of finding my shoes missing when I went to leave my yoga class. My fellow yogis and I retraced my steps – had I worn a different pair than I thought I had? Did I really place them on the little shoe rack or had I stashed them somewhere odd. Was I, perhaps, already wearing them and forgot that I had put them on?
No, they were honest and truly missing. They were comfortably worn, basic slip in sneakers – perfect for children and seniors because they have no laces. There’s no bending or shoehorns required. Do shoehorns still exist, anyway? They aren’t needed for these sneakers that I loved for their ‘aim, step in, go’ convenience. Ready, set, go was the name of these practical walking shoes, which had apparently walked off without me.
Knowing that a yoga studio is just not a place where disregard for other people and their belongings happens, we all figured someone slipped them on by mistake. Maybe they’re a bit too easy to slip into! Just the same, I had every confidence they would reappear, so I hobbled to my car in a pair of furry leather slippers that are all the rage that one of the young instructors lent me. The studio’s APB about the missing shoes was already sent by the time I got home.
As I waited for any news of their whereabouts, I recalled some of the (many) times I had been the one to cause the mix-ups. I had, after all, lost three pairs of shoes during the weekend of the David Bowie concert in Edmonton in 1983. That was a bit of a party weekend, during which I misplaced my own shoes, then a pair someone lent me, and finally the new flipflops we stopped to purchase on the way to Commonwealth Stadium. Something old, something new, something borrowed…
Another time I got home from work and realized I had two different earrings on – actually this happened more than once. One time it was even two different shoes – they just felt the same when I slipped them on in my morning daze, much like I assumed happened at yoga. But there was a time when I gave my air points collection card to a cashier and we both realized the card had the name Rick B on it. I have no idea how long I had been collecting miles on a card that belonged to some strange guy, or how our cards got swapped in the first place.
The hours turned to days without any news of my modest pair of shoes and I was beginning to think that maybe someone else needed them more than me. But the next week when I arrived at yoga class, there they were sitting on the little shoe rack right where I had left them seven days before. No note, no one coming to explain to me what had transpired. But a gentle reminder of the yoga philosophy about setting something you love free to see if it comes back to you.