Prayer Answered!

Please indulge me while I take a trip to just one of those times in life when I believe God answered my prayer.
I was always a large child. The tallest and sometimes largest in class in elementary school. The girl who skipped right past the girl’s department and went straight for grown assed woman. This was before the time you could get tall and tall between pants so mine were all either high waters or men’s which fit me terribly since I already had a very female body. Clothes were not cute and shopping was a dismal nightmare filled with my mother’s angst, my frustration and my younger brother’s “I’m so bored I am going to die right here!” exclamations throughout the stores. Yes, shopping was put off until the very last possible moment each school year with the pickings’ slim and tensions high. Recipe for a tear filled event.
This particular day I was 10 years old and nearly 5’8” and YIKES I wore a size 10 shoe. 10 and 10. I was shocked to find myself in a size 10 woman’s shoe. It seemed like just a few months before I was a 7.5...
I had bee lined into the store to try to beat my mother to her ‘sensible’ and never wear out choices of some type or another which would include but not be limited to saddle oxfords, Doc Martin equivalents or some other indestructible-before-they-were-popular lug sole. Well lookey lookey. A lovely pair of two toned black patent with olive green suede shoes. I immediately asked for them in a 7.5. The shoe salesman brought them out and it was as though I was one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters. I could not squeeze, press, beg, stuff or otherwise cajole my gigantic hoof into that shoe. I asked for an 8. The salesman looked embarrassed for me and suggested we just give the foot slide rule situation a check. I remember being aware of my mom nearby saying things to both me and the salesman but me not listening, I was in shock, afraid to find out what size shoe I now wore.
She was holding the wretched rust/beige indestructible saddle oxford in her hand saying something while the salesman bent down and placed my big ol’ foot on the evil measuring slide. Loudly, “well, it looks like you were WAY off. Size 10. Yep. That’s a size 10, maybe a 10.5”. I was stricken. Whadinduhell??????? I remember getting that ’I’m about to cry’ feeling. I held up the patent/suede two toned situation and had the guts to ask for it in a size 10, well I had to recoup something of my dignity didn't I?! You should have seen those big skate board looking shoes! I don’t know if it was the 2 colors or the two different materials or what but those shoes looked like they were a size 16. Of course I tried it on. It fit. I INSISTED that I had to have them. I NEEDED them. My mom looked deflated and defeated and so wilted… she didn’t have it in her to insist on my trying more shoes bless her heart. Nor did she have it in her to tell me that they were the biggest most ridiculous shoes she had ever seen and that I would feel and look like bozo the clown with them on.
I had to go forward as though I was fine. I had to pretend that I wasn’t surprised or scared that me feet had grown gigantic in a matter of months. I had to pretend that I wasn't having thoughts of foot binding or what I could do to fold my toes back without breaking them.
When I got home I went to my room, knelt by the side of my bed and cried out to God, “Please God! Please! Don’t let my feet grow not another bit. Not at all. Not a micrometer. Oh, please God, they can’t grow anymore. Make them stop!” I wept. I stayed in my room for hours wondering about my future. Just how tall was I going to get. Could and would God stop my feet from growing more?
Some weeks later my picture taking aunt drove up excited to share her most recently developed film. There I stood in all my glory with the great, great, great big black and green shoes on. I don’t know if the dowdy skirt and half calf knee highs (because those were one size fits all then too so most of my sock calf was taken up in footage) really made it that much worse or not but they sure seemed to. Nobody said anything to me. They didn’t need to.
Within a matter of hours I had dragged my feet along every curb, every rock filled driveway and any brick I could find in my neighborhood and had those shoes thoroughly torn up. I came inside and announced that, “oops, my shoes were messed up”. My father made some comment about my being a ‘big foot woman’ which became one of his terms of endearment for me and my mom said, “Get in the car”. Silently she drove us back to the shoe store. Without a single word she waltzed in, asked for a pair of rust and beige saddle oxfords in a women’s size 10. Handed them to me to try on. Paid for them and told me to ‘get the bag’. Those danged shoes were so big and luggly. They were indestructible and I never outgrew them.
I still wear a size 10 shoe!