The day before the
opening of the L.A. Times Book Festival on the campus of USC, I was
setting up my books for exhibit. It was a quiet day with
postcard-sunny SoCal weather, perfect for the young woman leading a
tour group of prospective students and their parents. She stayed at
the head of about 30 people, and she gave her entire monologue at
high volume so that everyone could hear. It was an impressive
performance that she repeated a couple of hours later with a second
group. But what really caught my attention was that she did the
entire campus circuit walking backward and wearing high heels. I was reminded of the line about how Ginger Rogers could dance every
step as well as Fred Astaire, yet she did it backward and in high
heels.
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| MindBodyGreen .com |
When you watch
such a performance, you can't help but wonder about the dichotomy
between esthetic and function. Whatever one thinks about the merits
of high heels, they are clearly a world away from the merits of foot
gear designed for support and warmth and the ability to be worn for
miles without producing blisters.
For a Tahoe local,
that USC performance brought to mind the rarity of high heels in the
Tahoe Basin. Such shoes no doubt exist in Tahoe. But outside of the
casino showrooms, they are mostly hiding in the back of closets.
It made me wonder if there might be a
useful shoe index that psychologists or sociologists could apply to
locales and then cross-reference to people. People looking to find
their ideal living environment could take a short self-assessment
test regarding their shoe interests and then check it
against a location's shoe index. It would save one a lot of wasted
time moving to Tahoe for the beauty only to discover that your
high-heel score of 9.5 is on the wrong end of the spectrum from
Tahoe's high-heel index of 1. Likewise, the young person with a
hiking boot score of 9 or 10 might realize that their unhappiness
living in Manhattan can be solved simply by finding a region with
hiking boot index of 10. A place like Tahoe, for example.
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| HikingLady .com |
When I thought I'd figured out
a new index by which people could find the perfect location – or
even the perfect mate – I thought back to those high school kids
who were considering applying to USC. Judging by the passive,
almost-blank looks on the students' faces – especially the boy's –
when they looked at the buildings and expansive lawns and gardens, it
appeared that extolling the advantages of life at USC was an
extremely difficult way to get the attention of those kids.
As I glanced up now and then while
stacking my books, I came to think that perhaps the young woman in
high heels was really perceptive about her job. When the kids turned
back from looking at the campus and watched their tour guide, they
looked more interested. It could be that the tour leader actually
preferred hiking boots. But walking backward in high heels was
probably her best trick for getting kids to listen up.
Would any of those
kids come to Tahoe to visit or even live someday? Sure, once their
high heel score drops to a 1 or 2 and their hiking boot score climbs
to 8 or 10. In the meantime, the tour guide's heels might have helped convince another kid to give college a try.
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