This story is from several weeks ago, when we went to the Santana concert at the Taste of Chicago.

Mel, Fatima and I had gone to the bathroom (well, bathroom isn't the right word for it. ultra-toxic port-a-potty is more accurate) and we had just finished washing our hands at the fountains they had set up. We were going to go back to our table where everyone else was. Budweiser had set up a place for its employees to watch the concert, which was in a shaded area next to the bandshell, so it was a little hard to maneuver around because there were trees, roots and grass all around. We were walking back and then I saw Fatima trip over a root in the ground.

Then her shoe fell off.

She went to retrieve it and realized that her cute little stylish flipflops that she had bought in Texas were broken. The side strap had broken off, as had the strap by her toes. The shoe was completely unusable. I offered her a ride on my back, she was frustrated and refused, choosing to take off her other shoe and just walk barefoot back to the table.

Once there, we let everyone know of what happened. Fatima had no shoe! We debated tying napkins around her feet, but she shot that idea down. Finally I offered to go back into the mass of sweaty humanity that was The Taste to go to the souvenir booth in hopes that they had some sort of footwear there. I mean, flipflops are 'in' right now, wouldn't it be logical that they'd have official 'Taste of Chicago' flipflops? Melanie agreed to go with me on my quest and off we went.

We maneuvered around the crowd like pros. We were women on a mission! There was a poor girl out there with no shoes! I wanted to shout out to the crowd, "My sister has no shoes! Out of the way!" to part the people, but I don't think they would have cared. We finally made it to the souvenir booth, where they had an assortment of keychains, t-shirts and hats. But no shoes!

Then Mel suggested that maybe we leave the taste and go to Michigan Avenue to see if there were any stores open that had shoes. We made our way through the crowd and walked over to Michigan Avenue. We found a souvenir shop open, but no luck there. A woman then suggested Osco, which was several blocks down the street. We walked down there, tired and broken. We wandered around Osco, and finally, tucked in a little corner, we found the flip flops. Alas, we had no idea what size she was! We just got a pair that fit Melanie and hoped for the best.

Then I looked at the price. $9.99 for a pair of freakin' flip flops!!! They're ordinary rubber flip flops, I didn't know why they'd cost so much. Grumbling a bit, I went to the cashier and she rang it up: Seventy nine cents. Looks like that 9.99 was actually 99 cents. And they were on sale!

So we ventured back to the Taste, fought our way through the crowd back to our area. By that time, the guys had somewhat fixed fatima's shoe, but it really wasn't in walking condition. She was very thankful and enjoyed hearing about our adventure.

As we all left the Taste, she was carrying her dear, broken flipflops in her hand. We all knew there was no hope for them, but she didn't want to let them go. However, after some prodding and chanting from the rest of us, we persuaded her to throw them in the trash. We had a short moment of silence, and moved on, Fatima in her not-so stylin' but highly functional flip flops from Osco.

Posted by Yano at July 28, 2005 01:06 PM

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