One Dancing Non-Princess

Peanutbutter and jam on yummy baguette.

I always loved the story of the twelve dancing princesses when I was little. It wasn't the neatness of the union with the twelve prancing princes that did it (I feel sure the version we had when small didn't see the eldest married off to some hoary old stalkerish pervert: if it did, I have firmly blocked it out). And certainly it wasn't the princess element that resonated: tombstone-toothed little girls with tangled curly hair seldom identified as princesses, in my experience at least. Instead, it was the enchanted forests and tattered shoes that captured my imagination: the branches broken from magical trees, the invisible cloak, midnight boat rides, the dancing 'til dawn.

I have always walked through my shoes at a rate of knots, scuffing them almost at once, prone as I was (am) to ambush by paving stones (and the ire of parents -- Startrite shoes in width and length  measurements did not come cheap).  However hard I tried (try), my shoes seemed (seem) always more battered than anyone else's. That the state of my shoes could be down to more than just clumsiness was (is) an appealing prospect: if my poor scuffed shoes could talk, what stories would they tell of my nocturnal adventures...