My Shoe!

The year was 1980 – or somewhere around there anyway. 7 makes sense. Actually, who’s kidding who? It would make sense today. You’ll see it in due time.

We were cottaging up north and my three cousins and I were out exploring when I had the bright idea to take a short cut but when you consider these were our cousin Lee’s families cottages, why was anyone listening to the city boy who crashed into the wilderness for a week a year?

Kind of like this blog, I have always been someone who just forges ahead and asks questions later and stepping on that hornets nest, is a symbol of how many of these run – don’t walk – adventures have gone. 

Yellow jackets to be precise and there were a shit-tonne of them. The moment I heard the quick escalation of buzzing, I ran like Woody’s trusted steed Bullseye – like the wind but as if without bone structure.

Ouch. Ahhhh! We’re doomed. No matter how fast I ran, the constant stings didn’t subside. Then I lost my shoe and I stopped – bitten in my tracks.

‘My shoe!’ I cried as my cousin Al looked at me with the kindest what the fvck face I had ever seen. ‘My mom will kill me if I come back with one shoe.

‘Really’, Al pleaded with a terrified giggle but today he was my hero even though we all knew that everyone was afraid of Aunt Val aka my mother – especially me. 

We made it back to basecamp and were stripped to our gitch, with two cousins unscathed but Lee and I – we were covered from eye socket to butt cracks. 

A trip to the hospital and a needle in the keister for the two pin cushions later, we lived to tell the tale.