Attribution: Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, encourages the keeper in his efforts to extract something useful from the verity that putting on your shoes and socks becomes a vastly different undertaking over the course of a lifetime.
From a hurried minute when your youthful mind is on other things—you know what they are, to a challenging and drawn-out procedure measured in one-sock-one shoe increments, the morning shoe-sock ritual does not age with grace.
It seems obvious that as senior status creeps up on you, putting on your shoes and socks each morning needs to be accorded greater respect as a daily personal accomplishment.
The commercial world tries to help with devices and equipment designed to assist with the shoe-sock challenge, but it can obviously do nothing about the brutal fact that as we age our feet get farther and farther away until they become virtually inaccessible.
The keeper has personalized the problem by announcing each morning to Phyllis: “Got my shoes and socks on, Honey!”
Sometimes Phyllis nods and smiles and other times she goes on reading her book as if she had not heard the keeper’s pronouncement. Either way, she always seems to have her shoes and socks on!
