Ruby Slippers!!!

so much for your plans… On being your own boss

Ruby Slippers!!!

When I was little, I used to memorize “The Wizard of Oz.” Whenever my parents sent me to bed before I was ready to go, I’d console myself, “Oh well, I’ll just watch a movie in my head!” Then I’d proceed to replay the entire thing in my imagination — at least until I got distracted or fell asleep.

Once at one of my brother’s soccer games, I crawled under my dad’s folding chair and whispered the fervent prayer: “Dear God, when I grow up, please make me have curly hair like Dorothy Gale!” (I realized in college that I in fact *had* curly hair… I just didn’t know how to use gel until I was almost twenty. The day I figured that out, I remembered that prayer and laughed.)

And also, every year around Christmas, when my parents told me to make my Christmas list, I’d write:

Ruby slippers
Ruby slippers
Ruby slippers
Ruby slippers

… ad nauseum, probably 10-20 times. I think I thought repetition would make it more likely I’d get them, I don’t know. Once I stopped believing in Santa Claus, my mom told me that she had looked EVERYWHERE for ruby slippers, they just weren’t a fashionable kids’ accessory back in the 80s. Instead she made me homemade princess costumes, and I had a basketful of dress-up clothes… but alas, no ruby slippers.

Fast forward 20-some years. I told the girls in my Bible Study sometime last year about my lifelong dream to own a pair of ruby slippers. They sent me a few text pictures of some of the glittery red flats popular for little girls. But I wanted sequins. And a heel. And a bow. (Reference my blog on girlyness here.)

Then a few months back, my boyfriend and I tried on costumes a costume thrift shop down on 4th Avenue. I fell in love with a Dorothy dress, but didn’t buy it for some reason. A few weeks later, he and I made a wager on the final game of the World Cup. I know pretty much nothing about sports, so I bet on Germany just because I’d been there before and liked it. (He bet on Argentina because he’d *like* to go there.) Germany won, and my prize was that Dorothy dress.

So now that I had the dress, I needed some ruby slippers (needed, you understand)… and suddenly it occurred to me (why didn’t I think of this before?!) that you can buy *anything* on Amazon. Lo and behold, these beauties came in the mail this week!

I wanted to wear them to work, but thought my sicker patients might have been less than amused to find their doctor playing dress up (just a hunch)… so, instead, I wore them around my house.

Every day.