I’m not sure when I made the switch from not particularly caring about my shoes to being somewhat obsessed with them. Maybe it’s hormonally triggered, like puberty. My boobs started growing and — WHAM! — suddenly I needed shoes. Pretty shoes. Stylish shoes.

Several years (and several cup-sizes) later, I have shoes for every outfit, in both summer and winter versions. I have task-specific shoes, like the Croc shoes I wear while cooking or gardening because they can be easily hosed off and, if need be, dunked in bleach water to disinfect. Of course, now that I know President Bush wears them, I don’t leave the house with mine on. It’s nothing political, mind you. It’s just that I realized, looking at him, how fugly those shoes really are.

I have other shoes that are worn only around the house, too, and I’m not just talking about my fuzzy leopard print slippers. I’m talking pink maribou trimmed mules, the kind that ordinarily call to mind platinum blond women bedecked in false eyelashes who call you “Dahling” as they puff on their arm-length cigarette holders.

I used to call those my martini slippers because, after two martinis, their 4-inch heel did an excellent job testing my sobriety. Then I learned how to walk in high heels a feat which has saved me a fortune in spilled vodka.

Now, I’m not saying that shoe obsession is strictly limited to women. I’m sure there are quite a few men out there — some of them are straight, even — who can understand having shoes to go with every ensemble in any type of weather, along with task-specific shoes, too. Most guys know, for instance, that whatever sneakers you wear to mow the lawn are going to get so trashed they really can’t be worn anyplace else except, perhaps, the hardware store. And quite a few who probably have favorite pairs of slipons to schlep around the house in.

Even shoe-loving men are puzzled by a category of footwear that makes absolute sense to shoe-loving women: the shoes that look like they’d be suited to a particular task, weather or outfit but aren’t. My favorite pair of quilted houndstooth fur-lined winter boots from Sugar shoes falls in this category. My husband thinks they look ideal to wear on the snowy days we’ve had this past month, but I know better. One misstep on a salted road would ruin the fabric, which is why I won’t be wearing them until the snow has melted and the streets are free of salt.

Another thing that men don’t get: how women can fall in love with a pair of shoes that we know, even as we’re buying them, we’ll probably never wear. It’s the shoeaholic syndrome, and I’m definitely a hardcore case. I have several pairs that fall in this category although, as God is my witness, I truly believed at the time that I bought them that I’d wear them. I continued to believe it after I got them home and tried them on, and every time since that I’ve slipped them on and found they’re either too high or too low, too daring or too plain, too pinchy or too something to wear. But they’re there in my closet and someday I might wear them. Until then I’m happy just knowing they’re mine.

My daughter, who is only 16, already understands this. When we hit the post-Christmas sales she absolutely squealed with delight over a pair of floral wedge sneakers like the ones from Jump shoes. Now, although she’s young enough to pull them off and even make them look fashionable, she knew — and I knew — that she’d never once wear them.

Why? Well, for the very same reason she liked them in the first place: they reminded her of the Spice Girls, that talentless “musical” group thrown together for the purpose of looking good so they’d sell records. They were to my daughter’s preteen years what the Monkees were to me, which is why I fully understood her lust over those shoes. And why, thanks to me, she now owns them.

I fully intend to borrow them some day. I’m just not going to tell her that.

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