I don't own a pair of red shoes right now, but I did back in high school. And they were pretty much all I wore. Made from some cheap synthetic material, they were surprisingly comfortable. Topped with red ribbon tied in a bow, they were as shiny as the pair of ruby slippers Dorothy wore in the wizard of Oz. They were a splash of color, just bright enough to appear inappropriate under a sober uniform skirt.
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One time, on a trip to New York, I was stopped on Broadway by a bespeckled, paunchy bald man in a trench coat. It was one of those classic New York moments where you, the out-of-town Pollyanna, are shaken out of your tourist daydream by a screeching person pulling his hair out. "Chaos mathematics! Chaos mathematics!" he howled. Perplexed, I paused just long enough for him to comment on my footwear. "Wow," he gushed, suddenly, inexplicably calm. "I really like your shoes." Not in Kansas anymore, indeed.
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I've heard that the walls of the newest mental hospitals are no longer practical white, but blushing pink. It's a soothing color, or so I've heard. Just a few shades darker and all hell would break loose? I wonder. But red is not a pariah of interior decorating in the public sphere. It's ubiquitous in diners--the plastic countertops that beckon from America's highways and byways. This is because the color red is notorious for its ability to stimulate the human appetite, or, once again, so I've heard. So there it is--in my grossly cursory explanation--the color red. The color that does not coddle, but startles, that does not satisfy but instills need. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to walk through life in red?
