I Went to See Rachel Platten and Came Home Without My Shoes

Earlier this week we took the children to a Rachel Platten concert, which was just as much fun as you'd expect it to be. But what I want to write about tonight is not what happened at the concert, but what happened on the way home.

We left the venue, it was dark, and we were walking back toward the car. The street we were walking down was a boulevard, with a grassy area in between the traffic moving in either direction. We crossed one part of the boulevard and ended up walking in the grassy median for a bit. I was wearing sandals and, as we walked, a leaf slid between one of my right toes and my sandal. I tried to shake it out, but it just didn't want to move and it was bothering me. I did a quick maneuver, not wanting to hold up people walking behind me, to free the leaf with my thumb. Instead of finding a leaf, my thumb sank into something soft...

You guys, there was poop in my shoe. And then, there was poop all over my thumb.

I'm not proud, but I started yell/shrieking, "It's poop! There's poop on my foot! And on my hand!" And the people around me, my family included, were understandably confused.

The next few minutes, in my mind, were frantic as I tried to fish wipes out of my purse without spreading the poop from my thumb to anything else. By the time we got to the car my hand was clean, but there was still poop in my shoe. I sat, without putting my legs in the car, removed my sandal, and cleaned my foot while the children gagged in the back seat. Once all traces of fecal matter were removed from my actual foot, I still had the problem of poop in my sandal.

You should know two things. One, Matt is driving a fairly new car. Two, the sandals I was wearing were not of the "hose it off" variety. I could not see a way to get the mess and smell out of the soft insole of the sandal.

Matt looked at me and said, "Leave it."

So I did. I left my poop shoe by the side of the road, with its partner, for good measure, and rode home barefoot.

That, my friends, is why I went to see Rachel Platten and came home without my shoes.