The Reunion

I am getting ready for another reunion of my law school class. This one will mark the 52nd anniversary of our graduation and the 50th anniversary of our Call to the Bar in Ontario.

The reunion is some months off, but I am more aware of it than most of my classmates because I am on the organizing committee, and because I have certain things to think about.

Namely, shoes.

When you go to a reunion, you have a whole room full of people upon whom you want to make a good impression. For me to make the best impression, and partly because it would cause me to radiate elevated self-esteem, I must be wearing high heels.

I have a pair of high heels. They are shaped like classic high-heeled pumps, but the heel is a mere 2¾ inches high, measured at the highest point where the heel takes off from the "foot" portion of the shoe. In the good old days, I guess I would have worn 4-inch heels and more or less been able to walk in them. But these current high heels, although they are of modest stature, are my glass slippers.

Glass because, when I walk in them more than eight steps, it is as if all my toes were collected into a vise grip and then compressed with extreme force. It is all I can do not to immediately rip them off and hurl them across the room.

Although I bought them a couple of years ago, these shoes are like new because my feet hate them and fight them. So the wearing of the shoes has been measured in footsteps, not minutes, much less hours. Head says, "Put them on and look lovely, slim, and elegant," and feet say, "I want nothing to do with them. They are instruments of torture. Give me the slippers."

It is a long time until the reunion, much too early for me to begin searching the internet for good jokes to have in my pocket. The clothes I will wear are easy to figure out. It is just the shoes.

I am coming up with a plan. Perhaps I can fashion an evening apron with big pockets. Big pockets that can hold both the bedroom slippers and the evil-but-lovely high heels. Thus I can make an entrance in the high heels and, as soon as I have tottered over to a chair at a table—preferably one with a tablecloth—I can secretly swap the high heels for the bedroom slippers.

Except that, once I am sitting down, I can sort of stand the high heels, although my feet are in a state of alert awareness, ready to clench in horror if I should actually stand up again and try to walk. Also, I can stand in them, but in the same state of alert awareness. It is the walking that is inconceivably painful.

I don't care. I am going to wear them, to the degree possible. I will report back.

My mom always cared about how she looked. Even when she was very old, and it was just the two of us in the house, she would put on powder and blusher and lipstick every morning and be ready to present herself to the world, even when her world consisted of just me, the cat, and the garden.

I care how I look if I am going outdoors. Well, not just to the garden, but, say, shopping. Certainly to bridge. The ladies notice. Going to a reunion, you care how you look.

In the old days, going to the office, I spruced up. At home, no sprucing up—general dishevelment. Look in the mirror and see the truth about yourself.

Back when I was practising law, I noticed that clients coming in for an event where they would see their estranged spouse usually dressed up to look as good as they possibly could. Why? Maybe to say, "This is what you rejected, you big idiot."

Once, at an examination for discovery, my client, the wife, was meeting her estranged husband for the first time in several years. His first words to her were, "You've gained weight."

Imagine!

I don't think she had any retort, but one might have been, "Yes. Since I haven't had to put up with you, I've been able to keep food down."

But anyway, that was a memorable remark.

You've gained weight.

There is some thought that you can break high heels in by wearing them around the house with hockey socks. I am not going to do that. Unnecessary pain. I am just going to think about them and steel myself mentally.

That's my plan.