"There's a Shoe in the Road!"

I recently bought a "gently used" car. The usual but bizarre scenario quickly followed. I began seeing many more cars on the road of the same make and model as my car. The label for this particular phenomenon is Observational Selection Bias (I had to look it up), and it is something we all experience after major purchases (such as automobiles), life changes like pregnancy (everyone seems knocked up) and trivial things like noticing a specific number or song repeating itself. So no, we haven't developed a marketable superpower. Unexplainable, yes. A reason to don a cape and tights? Save it for the bedroom.

 

Inexplicably, I have Observational Selection Bias about the damnedest thing - and for about ten years running now. This doesn't seem to fit the OSB pattern, however. After all, what I keep seeing is not unique to me or representative of anything I've purchased recently. So I ask:

 

Why in the hell do I keep seeing shoes in the road?

 

And here's the thing - it's never a pair of shoes, but always a single, solitary shoe lying abandoned on the side of the road, typically on the shoulder. It makes no sense to me - none of it - but I need answers. How were these lonely kicks abandoned, and why? And why the road, GD it?!

 

Take this shoe for instance:

 Clearly, it's a golf shoe. Left-footed. I have it on good authority that the nearest golf course is about four miles away. It lies on the side of a very busy highway (I snapped this picture early in the morning when traffic was light). The road is a causeway between two lakes. I have seen it lying there for months. God knows where it will end up after the snow flies and plows push it into oblivion. I'm a little worried about it.

 

Or this sad little guy:

No more than a quarter mile from the lonely golf shoe sits this worn and weathered sad sack. Right-footed. What color it was originally is hard to say, as it is now caked with brown stain or paint or . . . ew, maybe it belonged to a plumber. Nonetheless, it still rests near the intersection of I-694 and Highway 65 in Fridley, Minnesota. Since taking this picture however, this moldy oldie has flipped over, much like a turtle flailing to regain its footing (no pun intended). So far I have resisted the urge to stop and give it a helping hand. So far. Would that be weird?

Apparently, single pieces of footwear on roads are not limited to what we wear out in public. Somehow, even slippers make their way to the pavement:

Truth be told, I was never a big fan of this style of slipper. It probably got what it deserved. Two weeks ago it sat on a lonely stretch of Highway 61 in Forest Lake between two disconnected stretches of Highway 97 near the high school. Who knows, maybe some kid slept through his alarm and lost his right slipper as he dashed across the road only to be marked tardy after all, which was his third in three days. Dammit! Now he can't go to the Sadie Hawkins Dance  - which he was psyched for because being asked to go to a dance by a girl involves absolutely zero chance of rejection - something he hates - so instead of ever asking a girl out (he's kind of afraid of them), he plays it safe every Friday night and hangs out with his buddies, playing first-person shooter games online in the basement, wearing his bathrobe and slip . . . p . .e . .r . .s. Shit!

 

Then there is the high risk shoes - those that somehow find their way onto our busy freeways:

I was a big New Balance fan as a kid before my brand loyalty tilted toward Nike. I admire New Balance - American made (I think), Spartan design, excellent cushioning. But c'mon guys. Get with the times. Color, the flashier the better, is in. This two-toned gray, left-footed model lying on I-35w southbound, approximately two miles north of Minneapolis, is so 1983. The only thing I don't understand about why it was chucked out someone's moving car is why it's right-footed partner isn't somewhere nearby. Nope, after a brief check I was able to confirm that it was all alone. FYI - never pull over onto the left side of a busy urban freeway during rush hour to take a meaningless picture of shoe. What are you, stupid!?

 

I'd be lying if I said these were the only four shoes in the road I've seen in the last ten years. Not more than a couple of weeks go by until I see one again. Flip-flops. Heels. Work boots. Dress shoes. Old. New. Discarded, abandoned, alone. What the hell? The same question runs through my mind each time - how did you get there? What's your backstory? And why are you on the road?

 

Sadly, I've resigned myself to always wondering, and inevitably making up my own tale for each new shoe I see. Over the years seeing another on the road doesn't have the same ability to surprise me much anymore. Instead, my bewilderment has been replaced with a smile. It seems I've become somewhat of a storm-chaser of shoes (confirmed, I need a life).

 

The comfort in this, of course, is that my Observational Selection Bias regarding seeing shoes on the road will continue for years to come. And maybe yours is just beginning.