I CAN say with some conviction that Wanda was none too impressed when I walked home with a slither of dog poop hanging from my left thong.
I am of course, talking of the shoe variety. The thong, not the poop.
Not the American variety, which I had a brief affair with in my 20s, under the guise I’d feel free-spirited.
Wearing a pair of 1960s “sportys” presented the opportunity to share with onlookers a hint of well-shaped upper thigh. A strategic scratch around the bottom of the short leg, and presto. Beach date, here we come.
It never worked. Not once did a passer-by of any gender compliment my manifested glute, let alone see it as a feeble bid for attention from anyone who wanted to share my individuality.
Coupled with a moustache and a muscle shirt, I was before my time. The Village People didn’t come along until the 1970s and I know for a fact at least one of them wore a thong because I looked to see if I’d taken the right path in my attempts to woo scrutiny from an admirer.
Before you scoff, it was the late ’60s. The Beatles had arrived and we’d have done anything to stand out in that crowd.
As for the thong, they just weren’t very comfortable, to the extent I found myself spending more time pulling at the rear thread than I did trying to expose thigh flesh. Wanda still dry reaches at the thought.
I digress. Here I am at the front door accompanied by a panting dog and the rancid smell of a different dog’s pasture on the back heel of my shoe.
Wanda smells anything astray at 20 paces, so she’d not allowed me the misfortune of spreading the scent along the hallway and into the bedroom carpet where I was indeed headed.
I’m convinced that as you get older, more obstacles are put in front of you. Right in front of you.
Some might say it’s my own fault that I scraped a carpark bollard with the left fender of the family car. The darn thing had been planted right in the centre of the park I was eyeing off.
I don’t yet need a disabled park, but the ones with the diagonal yellow lines are fair game.
I say it’s a stitch up. You just have to be more careful to react to unruly objects these days.
Not only is the carpark an accident waiting to happen, things don’t get any better inside the shopping centre.
I wheel a shopping trolley along, and other older people step in front of it.
I ran over a banana peel not so long back and ran my sneaker through the remains. It was a lucky thing I had the trolley to keep me upright.
Come to think of it, the perpetrator was actually a full banana which became caught in the big wheel of the trolley – the ones they put on with a massive brake, to stop the trolley hurtling down a travellator into oncoming traffic.
Problem is, they’re ironically named because the darn things are usually broken.
If they don’t swing left or right, they’re stopping at random intervals which was the case when the banana got stuck. I was so vigorous in my determination to rid the trolley wheel of its intruder that I pushed forward when, lo and behold, yet another obstacle appeared in my way.
This time a child. The parents stared me down like I was evil Santa. Leave your child on a long leash and they’re bound to go where they shouldn’t.
“Did you see that, Wanda,” I said.
“Call me old if you will, but I stayed right on my feet. Give it 10 more years, and that situation is a broken bone waiting to happen, I tell you.”
Despite no children being hurt in the making of this episode, she scowled and walked into the nearest homewares store.
Who’s evil Santa now then, huh?
Too many things in my way these days
