On the way she decided to cut across the city park and enjoy the grass and the trees and eat her breakfast she had bought from a vendor outside her apartment building - a bagel with cream cheese. Mari found a nice park bench and walked toward it. She noticed the ground was a little wet and her heels seemed to stick a little as she walked. Mari ignored this slight inconvenience and to some extent she sort of enjoyed it. She was enjoying the nice weather and the trees that were starting to get their spring leaves and the birds that were chirping. She also noticed several children playing in the park and one had even brought their dog and was playing 'fetch" with it.
Soon she sat on the bench and brought out her bagel and began to enjoy it. She crossed one leg over the other and allowed the heel to dangle slightly off her foot. Mari was not paying much attention to the surrounding children and their dog and was instead enjoying the escape from her usual busy days. Being a clerk at a local department store meant she usually had one weekday each week off and this was the best day of ther week to take care of business (like go to see the Insurance Agent) that could not be done at night on on the weekends.
After a few minutes, one of the children threw a stick Mari's way and the dog came running. It was a black Labrador Retriever. The dog seemed to be confused and lost the trail of the stick. Instead, he saw the heel sticking out from her shoe and grabbed it instead and began to pull. Mari, resisted for a few moments once she realized what was happening, but eventually, the dog won and began to run with the prize. Mari began running across the grassy park in one shoe only in an attempt to regain ownership of her high heel. After about a hundred meters, she reached a low spot in the park where the water had not drained as well and she sank her remaining shoe into the mud and it came off. Not wanting to lose the dog, she continued on with no shoes until finally after another 200 meters, the owner who had also run over to help, caught the dog. After some coaxing, the dog dropped the shoe and the boy put the dog back on its leash, apoligized to Mari and walked away.
Mari put the retrieved shoe back on and then tried to retrace her steps to find where the other shoe was half-way buried in the mud. Since the dog had not run in a straight line, she could not simply walk toward the bench - about 300 m away - and find it on the path. She did find the low spot, sort of a ditch and after walking along it for a few minutes, she finally located her discarded shoe. Mari rubbed off the mud the best she could and replaced the shoe on her foot. Next, she went back to retrieve the bagel she had thrown down on the bench in order to throw it away before continuing her trip to the insurance agent's office.
She returned to the sidewalk and walked another 2 blocks toward the building where she needed to go. The street traffic was getting more crowded and she could not look down to see where she was walking very well, suddenly, she stepped square into a gap in a manhole cover with one shoe and the heel was wedged completely. She struggled for a minute or so as others passed around on the right and left offering no help.
Finally, Mari took her trapped foot out of the shoe and walked up to someone to try to get help. She asked a young man about her age who realized her plight and was happy to help. Mari limped back to where her shoe trap was set and the nice young man pulled and pulled on the shoe and it did not seem to want to budge. During their struggle they found out each other's name and began to chat a bit, the guy's name was Kent and he was a university student. After struggling for a few minutes, he looked around at some of the nearby storefronts and noticed that one was an Italian restaurant. He suggested they borrow some cooking oil from the cook and try to make the heel slippery enough to slip out.
Kent and Mari walked over to the restaurant and approached the maitre-d with their unusual request. At first he seemed skeptical, but since it was early and there were no customers yet, he decided to ask the cook in the back for a cup-full. He came back out with a plastic cup full of liquid cooking oil and Mari limped out with Kent trailing behind.
Kent carefully poured the oil onto the heel at the point of contact with the grate. They let the oil set for a minute and then began to wiggle the shoe back and forth. Eventally, there was a slip and the shoe came free. Mari slipped the shoe back one her foot and thanked Kent with an innocent peck on the cheek. Kent found Mari to be attractive and did not want this to be the last meeting between the two. He decided to be bold and ask her if she wanted to meet him to see a movie later on in the day. Not having any real plans, Mari decided to meet him later that afternoon at the theater for a matinee.
Mari continued on her way and into the building to see the Insurance agent. She caught the elevator and rode up to the 11th floor, took care of her business and returned to get on the elevator. The doors opened and as Mari walked inside she reached to punch the button for the ground floor, as she did that her left heel got caught in the gap between the elevator and the floor. She struggled and tried to pull the shoe out of the gap with her foot. The other passengers on the elevator tried to ignore their gawking but the sight was just to amusing to ignore. No one offered to help this time either. The doors started to close and Mari was about to panic. Just as the doors began to close, she made one last pull with her foot. This accomplished nothing but to vacate her foot from the shoe with the heel still in the gap.
Before she could regain her balance, the doors closed and the elevator began to move down to the ground floor as it was supposed to. Mari wondered if the shoe was still outside the elevator door or did it get swallowed up into the works of the elevator itself. The elevator seemed to stop at each floor twice on the way down. At each stop someone either got on or off the elevator and in some cases both occurred. Finally, the elevator reached the bottom and another group of peole boarded the elevator - again it stopped at each floor for someone to get on and/or off. Close to 10 minutes must have elapsed as Mari stood singleshod in the back corner of the elevator. No one ever made a comment about her shoe-less problem, but certainly several noticed.
Finally on the return trip up, Mari reached the 11th floor again and walked out of the elevator. The shoe was not there. But she saw a man and a woman standing off to one side in the hallway and they seemed to be looking at something. The lady was holding her shoe. Mari was happy to locate her shoe but was embarassed to approach the two so she listened in on their conversation. They were wondering how the shoe got there, if it could belong to someone in their office, stuff like that. Mari approached the two and asked if she could have her shoe back. The lady asked what had happened while returning the shoe. Mari was too embarrassed to answer and she just took the shoe and got back on the elevator without a word being said.
Mari was more careful this time, getting onto the elevator and soon she was downstairs and on her way to meet a coworker for lunch at a cafe by the Thames River. This was a nice place with a boardwalk style -walkway onto a boat-like structure built onto the riverbank. She had a good lunch with her friend. They discussed stuff from work and also about meeting Kent and their plans to attend a movie later. She went into few details about her shoe being stuck in the grate and she completely ignored the other stuck shoe incidents of the day, thus far. Then it was time for Mari to return home to her apartment and for her co-worker to go back to work. On the way out of the restaurant, while on the boardwalk, she caught one of her heels in between two boards. It was wedged pretty well but without having to ask for help, she was able to pull up with her foot and free the heel this time. However, when she did, her heel came out of the back shoe and the momentum flung the shoe forward and off to the side. She was horrified to see her pump fall over the edge of the boardwalk.
Mari hobbled over to see the result and was pleased to see that the shoe landed harmlessly on the riverbank, however just out of arm's reach. If only there was something she could use to reach the shoe? This restaurant had some decorations along the railing of the boardwalk and one of them was a fisherman's net. Mari's friend pointed this out and suggested they "borrow" it. Soon, Mari was standing lopsided with one shoe pulling on a fisherman's net handle until it popped off the railing of the boardwalk. She then bent over the edge of the boardwalk and netted her errant shoe. Of course, lunch patrons coming to and going from the restaurant were amused at this, but no one dared to make a comment. Mari replaced the shoe on her foot and returned to her apartment while her co-worker returned to the store to get back to work.
Once back and safe in ger apartment, Mari inspected her shoes that had been through a lot that day. She cleaned the slimy cooking oil from one pump and the mud form the other one and touched up some scuff marks and scratches on both heels. She really liked the way these shoes felt and looked so she decided to wear them again in a few hours when she left to meet new friend Kent for a matinee at the movie theater.
Mari and Kent agreed on a movie to watch then they got their tickets and entered the theater. They quietly chatted a bit during the previews but when the movie started they quit talking and focused on watching the movie. Mari slouched down in her seat to get comfortable and put her legs up on the seat in front - no one was sitting there. She had one of her ankles resting in the gap between two of the seats. When the movie was over, a gentleman sitting on the row in front and down to the left a seats got up and this weight shift allowed Mari's ankle to slip down into the gap between the seats and it got stuck.
The lights came on and Mari tried to get her trapped ankle free from between the seats. She pulled and pulled on her own before Kent finally noticed and asked Mari what was wrong. She was getting frustrated now and asked him to help her het free. Kent walked around to the row in front of them, facing Mari, and grabbed her foot between the ankle where it was stuck and her shoe. He lifted up and toward himself with a lot of force and with a final jerk, he freed her foot, but in the process, he took off her shoe which went flying forward several rows.
Mari paused to look at her ankle now red and raw from being stuck. Kent went looking for the flung shoe and began to look under seats down several rows to no avail. Mari realized what was wrong and she limped out of her seat and joined the search. After a few minutes she found the other shoe resting on between one of the seat backs and seat bootoms which had folded itself over the shoe. She replaced the shoe and they went to a nearby cafe for dinner then both returned to their homes for the night