Question: What does the U.S. Mail and debris throughout my house have in common? Hang on, because that’s exactly what today’s post is all about.
It started with Iris calling me on a frigid gloomy day saying she was in the neighborhood getting her car fixed and asking if she could stop by afterward. I was delighted. About an hour later she called again, saying, “I’m in the driveway!” I told her I’d be right down then ran through the basement and garage to open the garage door, only to find…no Iris! I stood there totally confused for a moment, then glanced over and saw that she was parked in my neighbor’s driveway! It’s funny how old habits take hold without our realizing it. She used to live in that house and automatically pulled into her old driveway.
After she re-parked, we climbed basement stairs into the house and as she began to walk down my hallway to the kitchen, I saw that she was leaving really dark muddy footprints on my long runner rug with every step! “Iris, STOP!” I yelled. As she looked back inquiringly, I pointed to the floor. She hurried back to the utility rug that was at the top of the basement stairs.
“Goodness gracious!” she said as she started to slip her boots off.
“Where did you get all this mud?” I asked as I ran to get a dustpan and broom.
“Well,” she said, “I guess I got it in the parking lot at the garage where my car was.”
I’ve been to that garage and I couldn’t figure where she had found mud. “Do those boots have really big treads?”
As she turned her boots over, she exclaimed, “Oh my goodness me! The soles of my boots are rotting!”
“They’re WHAT?” I asked, even as I could see the black rubber crumbling – not coming off in strips, but crumbling!
Well, it turns out that she bought these boots from a uniform supply company about a million years ago when she first became a mail carrier. She wore them constantly “through rain and snow and dark of night.” When she finally retired many years later, she stuck them into a closet and more or less forgot about them. Then on this particular day, when we had ice and snow outside, she decided to drag them back out and wear them.
So, she spent the rest of our visit in her sock feet and I didn’t give the situation much more thought, except for the fact that I’d never seen shoes do that before. When she was getting ready to leave, I said, “go on over to the sofa and put your shoes back on.”
“Oh, I think I’d better wait until we get to the basement.”
Good thing she did.
That’s when the hilarity of the whole situation got to me. As we went down the basement steps, I suddenly noticed little black “crumbs” on every step. As she sat down in a chair down there and picked up the shoes, big CHUNKS of rubber started falling off! As she walked from the basement to the garage door, she left this whole trail of little rubber “poops” with every single step. It reminded me of a time when I briefly had a pet rabbit. The first time I let him out in the living room he hopped across the room, leaving little poop pellets in a trail behind him. As Iris went out to her car, dropping more chunks of her shoes behind her on the driveway, I was overcome with hysteria, laughing so hard that tears came into my eyes.
From her car, she looked up and saw me having a laughing fit and said, “You think THAT’S bad? You ought to see the floorboard of my car!” This set me off again and I could hardly wave goodbye as she drove away. Much later that night I thought about it again. I know she went to the license bureau after she got her car fixed and now I wondered if she left her little “rubber trail” in both places. I can just see the people there staring behind her as she walked out, oblivious to the fact that she had become an environmental hazard. Even as I write this, I’m laughing again, like I haven’t laughed in a long, long time.
Iris says she’s going to try to get her boots fixed.
I say, “Rest in peace, little postal carrier boots. Rest in peace.”
Star, Simplified 