Hello, Lover

Last night. It happened.

The moment I have been dreaming of since my first purchase of a Vogue magazine when I was fifteen, since my first taste of high fashion while I studied a semester in Italy.

Last night, I got my very first pair of Manolo Blahniks. It's all a blur and I find the feeling of excitement on par to what I imagine winning an Academy Award feels like. Sure mock me if you will that they are "just shoes". But oh no my friends, they are not just shoes. They are Manolo freaking Blahniks.

Let me tell you how they came to be mine.

Matty and I went with my mom to her schools fund raiser last night as her plus two. We go with her every year and it's a great time. The food and company was, as always fabulous. There was a silent auction from 6-8:15. There are always the most amazing things to bid on. Trips, concert tickets, handbags, hand made jewelry, clothes, wine, and ipods. It's pretty high end stuff.

Usually we bid on a few things for fun. But we never get them. We always get out bid by someone with more money at the last minute. But it’s okay because its money for the school. And the items are out of our price range anyway. And there hasn't been anything that we must must have.

Last night was different. We walked in a little after 6:00 and there they were. Black Patent Leather Mary Jane's sitting perfectly on the end of the bidding table. Shiny. Black. My size. Perfect. My heart raced when I saw them. I felt like Wayne in "Wayne’s World" when he sees the guitar he wants. "They will be mine. Oh yes, they will be mine."

They are a $700 pair of shoes and the starting bid was $150. When would I ever get a chance like that again? I was at first very hesitant to bid. I convinced myself that they would not look good on me, that they wouldn't fit becasue of my wide feet and that it was not practical to buy them. But silly me, I tried them on and they fit me so well. Sliding my foot in was like sliding a hot knife through butter.

Having them on made me brake out into a sweat. I was in love. And it was all over after that. I wanted those shoes and was prepared to outbid everybody. Those shoes meant business and so did I.

I put my bidding Id number down next to the opening bid of 150. And I stood by them for two hours ready to jump in if someone were to outbid me. Several women walked by and tried the shoes on but they took them off shaking their heads because the shoes didn’t fit them.

It was like I was Cinderella and the Manolo's were my glass slippers. They only fit me.

I was trying not to be completely crass by standing guard over the shoes and I was doing my best to not mad dog every female that walked over to them. I figured the best way to win was to do two things...

1. Set my limit of how much I would bid ($250. keep in mind these are 700 shoes)

And

2. Become friends with every person who wanted to bid on the shoes. That way they would want me to have the shoes too.

After that, if those things didn’t work I would understand that they were not meant to be mine. And I felt okay with it because I knew (and I still know) that more Manolo's are in my future.

The evening went by pretty fast and just like that, it was the last two minutes of the silent auction. My hands were shaking. Anything can happen at the last minute. They were almost mine.

There was an announcement over the speakers that the Silent auction was closing.

The woman in charge of the auction came over to the shoes and held one up. She asked the crowd if anyone was interested. Nobody came over.

One minute to go.

Hands shaking. Can’t breath.

“Are you sure? 30 seconds. Nobody? Theses are really nice shoes” she said.

Going once…going twice…

Sold to me for $150.00!

“Congratulations, you won the pair of Manolo's.”

Wahooooooooooooooooooo!

Some people even applauded for me. I guess I was not the most discreet in my lust for the shoes.

I am not sure if it was my puppy dog “please don’t out bid me on the shoes” eyes or the fact that they really didn’t fit anybody or that I had some people helping me guard the shoes or that maybe I was really the only person who wanted them bad enough to cat fight. But I somehow didn’t get outbid.

A woman asked me as I was leaving at the end of the night, what I could do in a pair of shoes like that. I told her, in a pair of shoes like that, I could do anything from cooking dinner to fighting crime.

So there it is. The story of how I came to own my very first pair of Manolo Blahniks.

And we lived happily ever after.