This may be the coolest thing that happened to me this week. I follow Bree on Work Clothes I Suppose and this past week she was talking about how she and her fiance recently purchased Birkenstocks.
Now, to be fair, they live in Seattle and Birkenstocks are practically formal wear up there. Nonetheless, I was reminded of the Birkenstocks I had in the early days of high school (junior high?) that I used to wear with socks. Yep. Socks. So I went online to see if I could find myself a pair of discounted Birkenstocks. Um. Well, Birkenstocks apparently don't go on discount. Unwilling to relive my high school days at an $80 or up price tag, I gave up on the hippie sandals.
The very next day, I was out at a volunteering event and the woman coordinating the event was wearing blue, rhinestone Birkenstocks. Playing the fool, I asked her if by any chance her shoes were the famed leather sandals. Of course they were. I gushed over them and told her that I had been looking just the day before and was dejected that I couldn't find a pair at the right price. "Oh," she said,"I have a pair in my car right now that I can't wear because they gave me a blister."
Now I was nervous. I never say no to someone's castoffs, but the ones she was wearing were flashy/fancy, which is not my current fashion preference. She went on to tell me that she had like nine pairs and could totally unload the ones in her car. I just had to remember at the end of the afternoon to ask her.
So I had an internal conflict. Was she just being nice and I was supposed to forget? Well, I wasn't that conflicted. We were, after all, talking about free shoes. At the end of our shift, I "remembered" our conversation from earlier. And, look! I got free shoes.