The Courageous Tale of Miss Limps-A-Lot

It’s an old sports storyline. The star goes down to an injury be it a bad hamstring, a broken foot or a really bad paper cut, but he continues to play despite the excruciating pain and he leads his team to an improbable victory over a hated foe.

That’s exactly what Leah did last week. Just minus the sports.

She drove down to DC for two internship interviews, bringing with her a snazzy new business suit she bought for the occasion. She dug deep into our basement to find a pair of shoes she purchased several years back that matched it nicely.

But what she didn’t remember is that there was a reason those shoes were abandoned in the bowels of our home. She made it a block and a half from my apartment before she first cringed in pain. She shrugged off my offer to run back and get different shoes. It would be a decision she would come to regret, very soon.

By the time we made it to the Metro station, she had lost skin on the top of her feet. By the time she made it to a drug store to buy inserts for the shoes to keep her feet from slipping and tape for her wounds, she looked like she was in agony.

But the protruding lip was replaced with a friendly smile when she met the interviewers for the morning check in. Her painful limp melted away too. She walked smoothly, confidently. I was impressed.

We had a couple hours before she had to be back for the actual interviews, so I led her into a department store where she was able to buy less evil shoes. But by then the damage was already done. The blood was on the sock (Think Curt Shilling and the 2004 Red Sox). Still, she had to find something that offered a little relief. Leah took her new, flatter shoes, to the interview where she held her own and hopefully caught the eye of a few potential employers.

And when it was all done I gave her a big hug, told her I was proud of her and asked her just one question: “So can we throw away those shoes?”

She said: “No, I’m going to give them to Danielle.”