Morning all. We have made it to the middle of the week and you know what? I am feeling pretty good about that. So let’s start today off with a brand new writing prompt and see what sort of story emerges. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t certain where this was going to go, but I think I started to see a glimmer towards the end. I might have to spend a little while with this idea at lunch time today.
Wednesday, October 21st: The shoes fit perfectly.
The shoes fit perfectly. That was a surprise in itself. They were the only pair they had in this style. It was the only pair that attracted her on the discount rack. She hadn’t meant to buy shoes when coming in. She needed shoe polish and a new set of laces. She had both in one hand and was aiming towards the counter to pay for them when she saw the shoes.
The rack was the remainder rack of shoes. The last pairs of styles that were being discontinued or were left over. For most of the pairs she could see the reasons they were on the remainders rack. This pair however appealed to her. On a whim she tried them on. There was no size on the box, in fact the box looked like it lost a fight with an elephant.
They fit but were utterly impractical. She had no where in her life she could wear them, But they still appealed to her. And she spent so long doing the sensible thing, the right thing. She looked at the price and told herself if they were too much she would put them back. The listed price wa high but there was a sales sticker on the box. It was red. She looked at the wall chart.
‘70% off,’ she read. She did the math in her head. An indulgence but not an extravagant one. She decided to buy the shoes.
Dana took them to the counter and paid for the items leaving the store with a larger bag than anticipated. She also had a lighter feeling than she thought she would have. She expected she would feel a little twinge of guilt for an unplanned purchase, even at seventy percent off.
She was not a person who frivolously bought a pair of shoes simply because she liked them. She was in fact there to buy the shoe polish and laces to make one of her everyday pairs of shoes look newer and thus last longer.
She paid for her necessities but wasn’t miserly about it. She put some of her money in savings for emergencies and more of it away in longer term investments. Watching compounding interest accrue gave her a little thrill when she checked the balances.
The indulgence was so rare, so unexpected that it sent a thrill of pleasure through her. It was the impulse as well as the purchase itself that felt so alien. She rarely bought impulsively. When she purchased something it was from a list of necessities she needed or if it was something she saw that she liked, she made herself wait twenty-four hours to see if she really wanted it or if it was a fleeting desire.
More often than not it was a fleeting desire. She supposed that was why she expected the purchase of the shoes to sour before she got home.
It didn’t.
She found that surprising. ‘But a little indulgence every now and again isn’t bad.’
As she took her bag into her apartment, Dana tried to recall the last time she gave into such an indulgence. She couldn’t. For some reason that bothered her. She locked her apartment door and set the bag on her couch. Her apartment was small and it’s rent reasonable. It had plenty of space for her and no excess space she felt she needed to fill. She went through what she owned twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall, donating items she no longer needed and replacing worn out items. There wasn’t space for accumulation. She liked that, liked that she was required to pare down her belongings to only what was useful.
She spent her entire childhood surrounded by accumulation and excess. It was a relief to have her own space where that wasn’t an issue. As always, she shook off thoughts of the past for more immediate concerns.
