Hi, I'm Jeffe and I'm a Shoe Whore

by Jeffe Kennedy

I never really considered myself much of a shoe whore.

No, no - don't scoff. I really didn't. I never really "got" the jokes about shoe-shopping. I didn't splurge huge amounts of money on shoes. I never guiltily or proudly confessed the number of shoes I owned - or really knew how many I had.

But I do wear heels. I love to wear heels. Thigh-high black leather boots? Oh yes. Strappy, high-heeled sandals? Sign me up. Gorgeous pair of buff suede high-heeled boots on deep sale at DSW? Oh yes yes yes!

I like clothes in general and a great pair of boots or shoes can make an outfit. I still didn't consider myself much of a shoe whore.

Then a couple of things happened, a few years back.

The gals I worked with and traveled with one- to two- weeks out of every month teased me that they could hear me coming down the hall, by the click of my heels. I arrived a day late to a trip and walked into the conference room to discover they'd all laid bets on what kind of heels I'd be wearing. My boss had described me to a person who'd never met me as "someone who doesn't own a pair of tennis shoes." I wasn't sure what to make of that and she said, "well, do you?"

I didn't.

(Since then I've started running on the treadmill, so now I do. So there.)

Then I went to my first RWA conference. A gal stopped me in the hallway and took a picture of my shoes. She put the photo up on her blog. It was a very special welcome to my new tribe - especially poignant because I knew NO ONE at that conference. A year after that, my twenty-something stepdaughter, Lauren, gave me a pair of heels for Christmas. Red. VERY high heels. With platforms. My first thought was, how young does she think I am? My second thought was, I *love* these shoes! So, apparently she knew me better than I knew myself, which is the best gift of all.

Then there was an incident wherein I became obsessed with having a pair of high-heeled Mary Janes. Yeah, I know. No life is complete without a pair of those. That particular photo is the only one I had to take to put up this blog post. That tells us something right there, I suppose.

I'm coming to terms with who I am.
I blame Twitter, really.

Since all we talk about is shopping and what we ate for breakfast, if I mentioned I bought, or even like, a pair of shoes, they demand pics. It's what tripods are for, no? And the Zappos folks are smart about Twitter. One of the best examples of corporate use of social media that I've seen.

I still don't have all that many pairs of shoes, really. I'm no Imelda Marcos, by any stretch. But at RWA last year, Nora Roberts checked out my outfit and totally gave me the nod of approval.

High praise, for any shoe whore.