My $100 pair of Vomit Shoes

Dating Brian was always a treat.  Brian had been working for 8+ years when we decided to exclusively date only each other.  He owned his own truck, he had money in his wallet and our first few months of dating had some really fantastic evenings.

One date I will never forget, was the Reba McIntyre/Brooks and Dunn Concert he took me to.  He asked me to join a family party earlier that day and then take me to dinner and a concert that night.  I was super excited to go.

Brian's niece Gabby, was having a friend party over at the Rentmeister home.  Typical girl party with pizza, lots of screaming and laughing with presents galore.  I ate a piece of pizza that tasted a little funny to me, so I ate only one slice and enjoyed the cake and girls with the rest of his family. 

Before the concert, I wanted to go home and clean up for our extra special date.  I had the perfect outfit picked out that would go really well with my favorite pair of shoes I had recently bought.  I was a working girl as I attended college and after a summer of hard work, I went and bought a ton of clothes and shoes.  The shoes I loved the most cost me $100.  To me, it was well worth it!  I LOVED those shoes.

When I got home to clean up, I wasn't feeling very well, so I decided to lay down for fifteen minutes.  A short nap would be helpful as I knew I was going to be out late.  I fell asleep and awoke so much later than I had planned.  Brian was going to be here very soon and not only had I not cleaned up but I had bed head to make it worse.  I quickly called him and told him that I accidentally fell asleep and not to worry about taking me to dinner since my stomach wasn't feeling too great anyway.  I told him to eat and pick me up in time to take me to the concert. 

I was so excited for the night and by then my stomach had subsided a bit.  He picked me up in that shiny green Ford truck and we drove down to the Delta Center.  I was so excited!

We found our seats and the second I sat down, all the sickly forces in my gut went into full alarm. 

Oh NO!!  I immediately popped back up and told him as smoothly as I could that I wanted to go to the restroom before the concert started so I wouldn't miss a thing.  Gracefully I walked up the stairs and as soon as I was out of sight, I ran for the bathroom!!

This was not going to be pretty, so I was grateful for an end stall that was tucked back in to assist me in the next chain of events.  Something was terribly wrong with my gut and  it wanted to exit the building immediately.  Choice of exit, the lower floor. 

Unable to control anything, I continually flushed the toilet over and over again to try avoid the humiliation of sound and smell.  Sadly, I heard the opening act start and there was no way I would be leaving my stall anytime soon.  I endured as my body was doing it's job of getting rid of whatever was making me sick.  When my body was done, so was the opening act.

I walked out of the bathroom door to see Brian waiting for me with an extremely concerned look on his face.  So grateful that he waited faithfully at the bathroom.  What if he thought I ditched him?  And then left me there all alone?   Nope, Brian only thinks the best of others and so he waited over a half an hour outside the women's restroom for me.

I walked up to him and he asked me if I was ok?  I said "I don't think I can make it through the concert.  Would you please take me home?"

Like the gentleman he was, he took my arm, wrapped it around his shoulders and assisted me as we walked back to his truck which was parked in the parking lot across the street. He helped me into the truck and grabbed a plastic bag for me, just in case on the way home.

We drove down North temple and headed for the Redwood Road on ramp to I-215.  I was trying to make conversation with Brian as if nothing happened.  No way was I going to recap or acknowledge as to what just happened to me in the Delta Center bathroom.  So, I decided to just act normal, like everything was fine.

As we pulled on to the on ramp of I-215, I asked him to pull over.  Now whatever horrible nightmare that my body had tried to dispel of earlier had not been cleared out, and so my body chose to evacuate everything in my stomach.  I knew if I threw up in the grocery sack he gave me, that it would leak through and get all over his nice clean truck, so I asked for him to pull over so I could throw up away from his truck.

I ran over to a barricade and puked up that slice of pizza that was haunting me and then everything else I had eaten for the past week.  I ran to the barricade so that he would not see my throw up, because I would die if he saw me throw up.  As I leaned over the barricade, Brian stood by my side, holding my hair back and rubbing my back.  He saw it all!

When I had finished, I was utterly humiliated and could not look him in the eye.  His first response to me was "uh, I think we better leave those shoes here."

WHAT!!??!!  I immediately looked down at my favorite pair of shoes and they were covered in throw up.  FOR THE LOVE!! I knew that my beautiful vomit shoes had no place in his truck and so obediently, I took the shoes off and left them on the side of the freeway.  Looking back, I could have thrown them in the back of his truck, but then how does one properly get shoes cleaned so they no longer smell like vomit?  No clue.  He was right!  They were done.

I drove home with the window rolled down on a cold November night.  I would have died if Brian would have smelt my vomit breath.  I walked into my home shoeless in my socks and fell on my bed.  Humiliated, exhausted and sick, I fell asleep thinking, how am I ever going to have a come back from this one?

A couple weeks later, I drove on that on-ramp again.  There on the side of the road were my vomit shoes.  I couldn't believe they were still there.  My replacements were purchased shortly after, but I learned my lesson to never spend too much money on a pair of shoes.  Who knows what adventure could bring them to their demise!!