When I was very young, maybe thirteen or fourteen, I started wearing high heel shoes. I refused to even consider other kinds of footwear; the reason being that I (like many Latina women) am short. I didn’t like being short, and miracle of miracle, my five foot two inches could turn into a stately five foot six or even seven with the right shoes! I wore high heels to school and I wore high heels to the beach. Nobody ever saw me without my high heel shoes!
The first time I went to bed with my soon to be first husband, he burst out laughing when I got out of bed and stood up. “My God! You’re short!” Gee, thanks! I may have never stood up nude or otherwise again without high heel shoes already on my feet! Of course, this is not why he became my ex-husband five years later, but that’s another story.
During the course of our marriage, we were blessed with two children, a boy and a girl. Oddly, both children took after their father, with blondish hair and light eyes. I thought my genes were the dominant ones and I fully expected short, black haired Mexican children. Odd, I thought. Well, never mind, the children were quite presentable and perfectly formed so what else can you really ask for?
Long story short, the marriage ended, but the parenting did not. Both of my fair children became taller than me by the time they were eleven years old. Of course, they never knew this. I started wearing higher heels and then I added platforms. By the time the children were in high school, I was about five foot nine inches tall. Of course, this occasionally led to trouble (walking, running, falling, etc.) but for the most part it was fine. I loved being an Amazon woman!
As the years passed, I just never got the hang of any other kind of shoes. Now that I have six grandchildren, I still do everything in high heel shoes. I garden in two-inch sandals with heels and vacuum in my three-inch high heel slippers. I market in three and a half inch stilettos. I wear high heels all the time.
My children find this somewhat strange. Since both of them are reasonably bright adults, they do realize that I’m not really five foot eight. My neighbors look at me suspiciously when I’m out tending my flowers or pulling weeds. I have total strangers approach me and say, “Oh, you’re the woman with the high heel shoes.” I think my choice of footwear seems very exotic to a lot of people which surprises me somewhat.
Friend of ours, sometimes sidle up to my husband Alex and say, does she really wear heels all the time? Alex could not tell a lie if his life depended on it has to reply. “Yes, she does.” I sit in my bathrobe and have coffee in high heels every morning. I walk the dogs in high heels. I have eighty pairs of shoes or so, and there isn’t a low heeled shoe in the bunch.
When I was fourteen, I worried about being a short, slightly chubby Latina girl. Today, I never worry about being a tall, slightly chubby Latina woman in my high heel shoes.
