On Shoes and Perception

First, there are two things you should know about me: 1) When I get excited my voice jumps up by two or three octaves, and 2) Sometimes, when I laugh with abandon, what I abandon is the integration of my proprioceptors along with sensory awareness of my immediate surroundings. This lack of integration often leads to me hitting my head on whatever is behind, beside, or sometimes, even in front of me.

Back to the shoes.

Today, when my daughter brought in the mail, a packaged Dansko shoebox was among the bills and catalogs. It was addressed to my husband, but this in no way stopped me from examining the box.  My love for my red patent leather Dansko clogs is well known, so when I saw the label claiming that these were women’s shoes, my excitement was only partially diminished by the fact that they were also purported to be one size too big for me and brown. Thinking it was odd for him to buy me shoes, let alone brown shoes and in the wrong size, I called him to ask.

“Did you buy me new shoes?”  This is what I planned to ask, but as the prospect of new Danskos began to tickle my foot bed, my voice became several octaves higher than normal and fairly loud because the automatic gain control on his cell phone blocked out some of my words. I’m guessing I sounded like Minnie Mouse meets Screaming Jet Screamer: “Eep Orp Ork new SH . . . Z????”

After several seconds of confusion, we were able to understand one another and the fact that, sadly, no, he had not purchased any new shoes for me.  Furthermore, he did not remember buying anything from eBay (only later did the return address of the box strike my ew – used shoes sensibilities).  So the next logical guess, of course, is that the box probably contained a bomb.  Nevertheless, having seen many, many spy movies in addition to being a big fan of Naveen Andrews, the bomb diffuser in The English Patient, I was undaunted.  Quite sure I could handle whatever I found in the package, I placed it on the kitchen counter and opened it.

No shoes. No bomb. Only a book: J.J.Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception which he bought for himself!

When he got home, my husband tried to make up for not buying me any shoes (hey - it works for us) by saying that if he were to buy me shoes, they would never be these –  but these would be a distinct possibility.

Someday I would not be surprised to discover that my visual perception, love of shoes, and head-banging problem are all related.