There was a young woman who needed a shoe

It’s Monday and I was running late for work. No one should be surprised by this. As I mentioned, it’s Monday. I’m fighting a cold so I am also fighting the grog associated with the Nyquil Hangover. Pair that with a weirdly empty subway and I feel like I’m in a parallel universe this morning.

While I’m standing on the platform, waiting for the 6, I see this girl who seems way too interested in the stairs behind us. I’m wondering if I’m missing something of crucial importance so I turn around. Nothing. Weird, but you never know, maybe I just caught her at the end of her glance. Nope. When I look back at Gawker she’s still gawking. Weird.

I play this check, check back game a few times to see if I can figure out what the hell she’s looking at. Then I look down. She’s wearing cute silver flats. Wait–correction. She’s wearing cute silver flat. And her shoe-less foot is resting on a black 70-page spiral notebook. There is no scenario that I can come up with that would leave a person wearing only 1 shoe in the subway and being so calm about it. It’s not like she was running for the train and slipped right out of her shoe. She would have realized it if she had and turned around immediately. It’s not like she had an issue with just 1 shoe out of the pair and couldn’t wear them–she’d have realized that before she left the house and changed. Or at the very least turned around, went home, and corrected the situation.

From watching her, it was like she was waiting for someone to bring her the other shoe. Again, no scenario that I could come up with makes that an acceptable action. This girl haunted me the whole commute and even now, caffeine fully in my system, there is still absolutely no scenario that I can come up with.

NOTE: In a completely unrelated story, I took the 6 to 86th with a woman who exited the train in favor of an express. When I hopped on the N, R, or W (I didn’t bother to check which) at 59th, she followed me on to the train. It just makes me feel a little better about my commute to know that I still beat the people who try to beat the system.