"A Man And His Shoes"

I have written many times before about the fact that as far as fashion statements go my husband is a hot mess. He is a man with a style all his own, and his unique fashion sense carries itself all the way down to his feet. This man loves himself some shoes...

When I met my husband he was the proud owner of a pair of patchwork boots. Over the course of the two years that we were friends I saw him wear those boots several times.

It wasn't until a couple of years later, when we were dating that I found the words to gently tell him that I thought those boots were the most horrible looking shoes I had ever seen. He seemed extremely shocked, but on the upside I never saw those boots again.

I felt a huge sense of relief when he stopped wearing them because I will tell you that when we went out, they were real attention getters. My relief was short lived, however, because as time went by, and we were married, I began to realize that my husband has an "out of the box" fashion sense especially when it comes to shoes.

Over the years I have seen this manifest itself in the form of everything from the patchwork boots to bowling shoes.

That's right, bowling shoes. This man once wore bowling shoes that he had gotten from somewhere, complete with numbers on the back of the heel to the Superbowl of motor cross in Atlanta. I know that motor cross is not exactly a formal affair, but bowling shoes? Seriously??

The best part is he not only wears them, but "he wears them proud", as my Granny would have said. For example, the night he had the bowling shoes on he noticed a woman in the elevator with him staring at his shoes. He looked right at her and said "ma'am if you'll press 2 for me I'll tell you where you can get a pair of these shoes". I am sure that poor woman was mortified.

Since the bowling shoes there have been many other pairs of shoes that fall into the category of "attention getters". About a year ago he bought himself some Ed Hardy tennis shoes. For those of you who may not have seen these they look like massive tattoos on canvas. Those had to be retired one day, when he came home and declared the market saturated with the Ed Hardy name.

His closet holds many great choices in footwear and he has rocked them all at one time or the other including his shiny patent leather police shoes that were recently brought out of retirement, and worn with black dress socks and shorts to dinner on Thanksgiving day.

Please..just save yourself the effort...don't even try to compile a visual. Without him standing before you it's simply not possible.

I know that my husband is going to continue to have a bit of flair for the "different" when it comes to his shoe choices, and after 27 years of marriage I am finally making an attempt to come to terms with that.

I still don't think that it makes me a bad person if I admit that I have also decided to begin to pray that Heaven will be a barefoot paradise........