The Flip-Flop

What in the world was that little brown thing in the middle of the road?

(If you read the title up there, then you’d already know.)

“That” was a brown and black flip-flop. Just one. Goodness knows how it ended up on the entrance ramp near our house.

I mean, just how does a shoe end up in the road? McDonald’s cups, grocery bags, and cigarette butts by the thousands, I can understand. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. But a SHOE?

Was someone hanging their feet out the window? If that was the case, they’d better be darn thankful that the only thing they lost was a shoe. Remember how bus drivers used to tell those horror stories about the kid who stuck his hand out the window and it got tore. right. off!?! Gosh, I miss the good old days when bus drivers could use gruesome stories to scare kids into good behavior.

Was the shoe thrown out the window? Maybe some punk kid decided it’d be absolutely hilarious if he tossed his buddy’s shoe out onto the road. Or maybe his girlfriend got mad and hurled one of his shoes out as the quickest form of punishment she could think of. Maybe like my little nephew, a kid simply got a wild hair and tossed the shoe out just to see what would happen.

Well, however the flip-flop came to be on the entrance ramp, it was never reclaimed. That shoe has staked out that piece of asphalt as its permanent residence. Over the past several weeks, it has moved a foot or two to the left, but it has stubbornly refused to move to a less hazardous location. Large tires, loud radios, rushing wind as the trucks and cars fly by on their way to the outer loop--nothing bothers that little shoe. Like any good flip-flop, it sports a “devil may care” attitude and it doesn’t want anything to do with your traditional ideas about where a shoe ought to be. That flip-flop has an independent spirit and doesn't want to follow your rules.

Of course, one day soon that independent spirit will lose the battle with the busy entrance ramp to a busy interstate and the flip-flop will learn an important lesson.

Rules are there to keep you safe.

Just like I try to tell my kids. They insist on learning the hard way, too.