So even though I decided a few weeks ago that this was the next cliché I would take on, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, I was stymied right out of the gate by the fact that what I had wanted to write about is a little far afield from the accepted use and meaning of the phrase. Chalk another one up to Ms. Malaprop. Bonus points to nerds like me who remember Sheridan’s The Rivals from high school English class.
According to The Internet, “This expression alludes to a person awakened by a neighbor who loudly dropped one shoe on the floor and is waiting for the second shoe to be dropped.” And its meaning is very neutrally about logical follow through: “To await an event that is expected to happen, due to being causally linked to another event that has already been observed.” As in “Donald Trump was elected president so it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and all hell broke loose.”
However that is not how I have used that expression. I tend to think about it when good things happen, but I still feel a creeping sense of dread, like something bad must be lurking right around the corner. And that’s when I start asking myself “when is that other shoe going to drop?” Because it seems like it’s bound to.
It’s downright sinister to assume that because things are good, the only logical and expected outcome is that something bad will, or at least could, happen next. (Shauna and Harrison, and pretty much all of you, are probably not in the slightest bit surprised that I have once again taken things in this saturnine direction.) It seems akin to other joy-stealers like imposter syndrome, which tends to kick in for me in what should be moments of triumph, like starting grad school or a great new job.
So I guess I’ve had that saying on my mind because lately I’ve been on a run of good luck (see previous blog post about pura vida and living large in Costa Rica). I’m also embracing some good fortune in heading to Dakar as my next move, “the Paris of West Africa” as I have heard it called, or “the San Diego of West Africa” as I have long thought of it.
And while I have had fleeting thoughts of shoes dropping, or in fact have thought that by my reckoning of the phrase, what with the pandemic, and the economic downturn, and the unprecedented political chicanery that gets worse by the day, and protests against white supremacy testing the frayed fabric of our already polarized nation, that there are simply no shoes left in old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard to drop. All. The. Shoes…have already dropped. But in a positive sign that I might be ready to abandon my perverse take on the cliché, I’m happy to find that in spite of it all, I’m not putting up my falling-shoe-protecting umbrella, I’m mostly still just enjoying pura vida here in Costa Rica and grateful for a silver lining of the pandemic, that the uncertainty about flights, visas, and laissez passers, has imposed a generous time horizon for me to keep on not feeling malaise before I have to report for duty in Senegal and reconnect with those stilettos pictured above. That I may or may not have a chance to wear any time soon. But if so, I’ll do my best not to drop them on the floor loudly, one at a time, and bother my downstairs neighbor.