Lost Shoe Season

It seems like winter and summer are the seasons to lose shoes. I don't recall ever finding lost shoes in the fall or spring. Just summer and winter.

Last summer, I was walking in the park with someone, and we noticed a forlorn, slightly grimy, tiny bright pink flip-flop with a plastic flower where the straps joined between the toes. It was clearly well-loved, but had been left behind. I was imagining the circumstances under which the tot had probably been forced to leave it behind - perhaps she had been playing in the fountain and hadn't come when her mother had called. Maybe the mother came after her, counting in (what she thought was) a controlled voice, and whisked her away, the flip-flop flying off her foot as she was carried into the air by the angry mama.  "Mommy, stop!" my brain told me the little girl cried as she struggled against The Powers That Be (aka, mothers in a fury)...but to no avail. When tired worn out Mom and Small Girl arrived at home, Mom must have been even more upset. Or just have thrown up her hands and chalked it up to a long day.

But maybe the little girl was just forgetful, and, so caught up in the shiny sparkle of the reflection of the sun on the water, took a mis-step and stepped out of the flip-flop, and, being entranced and also used to running around without shoes on, and the sidewalk not being overly hot or cold (given our climate), a small foot could easily slip out of its none-too-restrictive 'holster' and the loss of said flip be unnoticed.

Wintertime shoe losses are a little hard to explain...especially since the lost shoes I see in the winter are usually adult shoes. Just last week I saw a mid-calf sogged synthetic suede boot lying in the middle of a busy road, mired in six inches of slush. Later the same day, I saw a snow boot with the shaft bent sideways at the very low waist as if it were out of breath and just couldn't deal with the snow anymore. A week before that, when it had been dumping rain, I saw a ballet flat akimbo on the base of a streetlight. If the shoe had been on a foot, the owner would definitely have had torn a few ligaments and be in a cast.

Why is it that people lose one shoe, and not two? I understand losing one glove; half of a scarf-hat duet, one mitten, one shoelace, or the removable hood of a rainjacket...but just one shoe? Especially adult shoes? In the wintertime? Plastic children's shoes in the summer, I understand a bit better. But leaving your shoes in the middle of a snowstorm to drown in slush is just plain irresponsible.

So why have I come across so many in the last two or three weeks? Were they having a Lost Shoe Where's Waldo, and nobody bothered to tell me? Or does the winter wet make people get so distracted they lose just one shoe?