Shoeless
[Parodies from the Past-20]
In the beginning, Leopold Shoesless awoke with a start. Where are my shoes? he thought. Not that he could recall the last time he wore them, but the feeling of absent footwear nagged at him like a pebble in a shoe he wasn’t even wearing.
He shuffled through his small Dublin kitchen. Toast. Always toast. Brown, not too burnt but not too soft. Molly, of course, would be upstairs in bed, snoring softly ~ she always had toast crumbs in the bed, but she wouldn’t hear of his complaints. Molly, the goddess of crumbs and soft snores.
He sat down, chewing thoughtfully. “Marmalade,” he mused to himself. “Why does it have to be called marmalade? Marmalade. Mar-ma-lade. A march of syllables. Could’ve called it orange mash. Much simpler. But no, it’s mar-ma-laaaade. Breakfast feels fancier this way.”
Outside, the milkman clattered by, hoisting a jug of milk like a gladiator raising a shield in the arena of domesticity. Leopold considered briefly if he should also become a milkman. But no, too much responsibility. There’s only so much one man can handle before breakfast.
His day stretched out before him like an unwashed bedsheet. Oh, there were things to do, but none of them particularly compelling. One could walk, of course. Stroll. Wander. A man in search of shoes.
Suddenly, a revelation. He remembered the pub! Of course, that’s where he left them. Somewhere in the dark recesses of last night’s pint and pretzel frenzy. The faint taste of stout still lingered on his tongue as he tried to piece together the previous evening. Something about a man named Medalus babbling about the sea. And meat sandwiches. Always beef sandwiches.
It was time to begin the quest. He imagined himself as a Homeric hero, except instead of seeking glory and adventure, he was seeking footwear. The streets of Dublin would be his Odyssey, the cobbled roads his wine-dark sea, the pub his Ithaca. If only Odysseus had been this practical.
On his way, he passed a butcher’s shop. “Kidneys!” he muttered to himself. “I should’ve had kidneys for breakfast.” But no time to dwell on that now. Ahead, his destination loomed: The Wandering Pint, a pub notorious for its ability to make patrons forget both their dignity and their shoes.
Inside, the smell of beer, sweat, and unspoken regrets hung heavy in the air. There they were. His shoes. Sitting beneath the bar stool like two forlorn sailors stranded on a distant shore. He bent down, pulled them on, and sighed with satisfaction.
“Shoeless no more,” he muttered, walking out of the pub. Victory was his, but it felt hollow, like marmalade spread too thin on toast.
He headed home, knowing that Molly would still be in bed, the goddess of crumbs awaiting his return, as the circle of his day closed like a well-worn boot.
And thus, Leopold Shoesless completes his epic journey, not through the epic battles of men and gods, but through the mundane trials of lost shoes and marmalade musings. Truly, a hero for our times.
Not to mention that on his sojourn he saw a clap of electrifying lightning in the sky which tore the clouds apart into smithereens giving out a ghastly roar of electrical audio that sounded like a boom from a heavy metal concert gushing out of central park in New York on a warm summers evening;
“Henablixitshandianbliksemkaminarishandianbeongaebarqbijliastrapisimsekblyskawichasalamabarakeldinidi”