Shoe-shakin'

[Bill]

I moved to Arizona for a few years in the 90's. I know what y'all are thinking right now, the same thing I was back then when I had the opportunity presented to me to relocate "out there". "Arizona? Where the heck is that? Is that a real place? I thought it was just something made up for cowboy movies, just a bunch of sand right?", (mentally picturing the Sahara or Gobi desert) I found out it really is a real place, and when you arrive there, either by car or airplane, I mean you don't get a kiss or a lei or an Aloha or welcome to Arizona or nothin'. You stick your hand out and whoever greets you just says, "shake your shoes out every morning 'fore you put 'em on." I say, "Excuse me?" They say, "Scorpions. They like to get in your boots and shoes." I gulp a little and say, "they 'LIKE' it?!!" "Twould appear so, as much as they do it. Just shake 'em out in the morning" At this point, I'm halfway freakin' out. Call me a wimp if you want to, but I don't like scorpions, at all. "you mean scorpions are a real thing? Like that little lobster thing that sneaks up on you and stings you and can kill you?" My welcoming committee snorted a little, and said,"they gen'rally don't sneak, they just wait on ya, and if they do sting ya, it won't kill ya, likely, just make ya wish you was dead" Needless to say, after that sweet welcome, I shook my boots and shoes out everyday, religiously, while I lived in Arizona (good news- I lived there 2 years and only killed 13 scorpions in my house) and I continue the pracitice of shaking my shoes out every morning to this day, even though I've moved back to Virginia,......except for one day about 3 months ago. I got up late for work, took a quick shower, got dressed and saved time by not shaking my shoes out. Just threw on my shoes, and grabbed my coffee and was out the door. Ten minutes later I'm flying down the highway at 75 mph (I'm not good at metric conversions, but let's try the math. 75mph X 4.85 divided by 12 minus 2 = Hauling Ass) I did the math in my head and figured at that rate of speed, I'd only be 10 minutes late for work, which is acceptable by anyone's standards. So, I stretched out my left foot to relax for the rest of the drive, and just then the oddest thing happened. There was an "object" at the end of my shoe, inside, at the end of my big toe. Hmmm, that's weird, I thought, maybe a little bit of sock balled up? I pushed my big toe forward slightly, and the "object" quickly moved over to the open space near my little toes. I gently probed that area with my smaller toes, and I could feel the "object", gently probe back. At this point, I blasphemed as I realized some unknown live thing was trapped in my shoe as I barreled down the road with no place to pull over for another 5 miles (5 miles X 820footsteps divided by 35leaps plus 50bounds = Too Damn Far!) At this point, I was wide awake and a more than a little nervous. I considered my options, plow into the nearest tree and take us both out, no, try to crush it to death in my shoe with my awesomely powerful baby toe before it stings me or bites me, no, freak out and rip my shoe off while doing 75 mph down the road, no, so I just sat there for 5 minutes, and continued to drive, scared to breath or move, heading for the nearest place to pull over. Every minute or two, I could feel the "thing" in my shoe move around. "Aw, man, I hope it's not getting nervous, too". I didn't move and finally flew into a grocery store parking lot and opened my door and ripped my shoe off and flung it in one really sweet, smooth motion. At this point time everything shifted into slow-motion. As I flung my shoe into the air, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the soft-drink delivery man and the potato chip man freeze, and for some reason, look at me like I was a crazy man, and then when my shoe hit the asphalt, they said both came runing over. Out of my shoe crawled one of those 2 inch big black beetles with horns and crazy antennae waving all around. The delivery men and I crowded around it, me looking ridiculous, of course, wearing only one shoe. One guy said, "how long was that in your shoe?" I said "about 15 minutes", and the other guy said, "Man, there's no place to pull over back there is there? That must have been terrible!" I went over, got my shoe, and said, "yeah, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy"