jamieproctor.ca

Scal was a thousand thousand years old or maybe a lot more than that – older than dirt, at any rate, or at least the dirt that lay around her little house in the big forests. She’d been sorry for things once, but now she was old and with age had come shamelessness. Older. More shamelessness. Close enough.
Anyways, Scal was lying in her house sleeping one day when a tree fell on her – ow! – right across the middle, like that.
“Eh?” she shouted (Scal had always been a great shouter, but she shouted louder and longer these days). “Who’s up there? Who’s up with that? What’s that going on?” She kicked the tree off herself, looked around, saw a woman with a chainsaw, and put three and six together. “Nine!” she shouted.
“Pardon?” asked the woman. “Are you alright?”
“All-right? Of course I’m not all-right – because you’re WRONG, and you’re standing here being WRONG, and you’ve WRONGED a tree onto my house!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the woman, “but I’m a forester, and I had to take that tree down before it landed on someone’s house; it was old and rotten.”
“It landed on MY house!”
“Ma’am, your house is a small dirt hillock. I don’t even know how you fit in there.”
“Well, it might be perhapsing that I took a snooze for a few longs,” said Scal. “But there’s no excuse for what you’ve gone and done, and here you are trying to make it! Nettles nip your nipples and may a rabbit nest in your ear!”
“Look,” said the forester, “there’s no call for that sort of language. Whatever language that is. Before you go criticizing people, why don’t you try and walk a mile in their shoes? Then you’ll see how it is for them.”
“I don’t have any shoes at all,” said Scal proudly, and it was true. Her feet were bare, bony, and leathery as a sea-turtle, now and ever since the day she was born, whenever that was.
“Well then you’ll never know how it is for me, or for anyone else,” said the forester.
“Oh really? Well, we’ll see about that!” snapped Scal. “Give them here!” And with a quick jump and a punch and a wrestle and a little biting (Scal was never fair in a fight, and also pinched and spat) Scal had procured herself a new pair of forester’s boots. It only took her six tries to put them on the right way round on the right feet, but she felt that they looked mightly fine.
“These boots are mightily fine and I do feel that way,” she told no-one in particular. “Now let’s walk them.”
And walk them she did, one foot in front of the other, checking step by step to see how her mile was going, tromping through the woods.
“I’m a forester,” said she, measuring the trees with a jaunty eye. “I’m monitoring and tagging and logging and learning. I know all about the spruce budworm and the Asian longhorn beetle and I even know what an Asia is, isn’t that something? Hey, you, tree! Come here and taste my saw!”
The tree tasted it, found it not to its taste, and protested by keeling over.
“That’s it for you then, you sluggard. But you were hanging over the road and that was a problem that needed to be fixed. What would we do if you fell on a car, eh? What then? I know what a car is too, mark my words.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?!” shouted a businessman.
“Nothing,” said Scal. “I’m a forester. What’s wrong with YOU, that you’re being so rude to me?”
“You dropped that tree on my car, you crazy old coot! I have a meeting in five minutes with important people who have important money in important places, and now it’s all ruined forever because of you!”
“Well!” said Scal. “I don’t see why you’re so upset about such silly things, I truly don’t see at all. Here, give me your shoes and we’ll sort this all out then.”
The businessman blinked expansively at this, and a great sense of distress and confusion filled his life in a way he was not prepared nor equipped to express adequately. He felt a man adrift in a world that worked quite differently from how he’d come to expect it to, as a castaway upon a darkened sea. If only he had someone to ask, someone to turn to, someone to explain for him this strange new place that his comfortable life had become. Unfortunately for him the only person present was Scal, who smacked him head over heels and took his shoes without asking permission.
“Hmmm,” said Scal, wriggling her toes in them. “These are BUSINESS shoes. For business. There is no business out here, this is all wrong. I’d best go to where the business is.”
So Scal clambered into the car, smacked its wheel until it worked out of embarrassment, and scooted down the roads and the highways into town. Which wasn’t really a walk, so it didn’t count as her mile. She parked in the biggest space in the biggest lot in the biggest building and marched out into the fresh sunshine and saw profit six ways to Sundays.
“Ahh, business!” she sang. “You! What’s your name?”
The woman stared at her.
“Doesn’t matter and I don’t care anyways, you’re part of the team! Turn in tomorrow at eight so we can fire you without severance for non-compliance! Hurry up or we’ll sue you for breach of contract. That makes me thirsty – do you have a drink? Give me a drink, somebody. Hey, give me that drink, you.”
The man holding the drink indicated with two of his fingers that she should get her own drink because this drink was his.
“That’s ungrateful and unmannerly and shows a lack of appreciation for business,” said Scal most severely. “Don’t you know that I am a businessman and I make jobs for you, with my business? If you keep me happy maybe I’ll hire you and fire you tomorrow too, won’t that be nice? But not anymore. Now I’m just going to leave and it’ll serve you right. You don’t deserve to have a minimum wage anymore. I’m going to see if I can cut your welfare checks, see if I can’t. Bum.”
Scal skipped down the street merrily, then stopped to giggle. “Heh. Bum.”
“Agreed, friend,” said a man in a nice suit. “You look like a good fine businesswoman, am I right?”
“BusinessMAN,” corrected Scal. “These are businessmen shoes.”
“Errr…right,” said the man. “Well, I’m a politician and I’d love it if you gave me a lot of money. I agree with you that the man over there’s a bum, and if you give me a lot of money I’ll see that the bums are put to good use under the helm of fine upstanding citizens like yourself.”
“Hmmm,” said Scal. “That sounds like business to me, but it’s been a mile. I’m done with business now, go ask someone else.”
“Oh come on,” said the man. “Look at me, I’m standing up for the little guy here, I’m just doing what’s best for the people, come on come on. How can I do that without help from all the people, especially the good businesspeople with lots of money like you? See it from my point of view, why don’t you?”
“Good point,” said Scal. “Give me your shoes.”
“Will you make a contribution to -?” asked the man, and that was as far as he got before Scal took his shoes. Past that mostly he was unprintable, so he’s not in this story anymore.
“Hmmm,” said Scal. These shoes were different. They weren’t as comfortable as the business shoes. They weren’t as tough as the forester boots. But they were dynamic shoes, shoes that looked like they talked the talk as they walked the walk. These were shoes that promised a brighter future without neglecting the traditional values of the nation’s past and incidentally my opponent has advocated reptiles in the past next thing you’ll know he’ll want you to marry them.
“My,” said Scal. This was turning into one of the most interesting walks she’d had in decades, even if it was a bit long and rambling. But before you could walk you had to fly, as she’d heard. And she was needed elsewhere in the country, to sit in a big room somewhere and argue extensively.
She walked towards the airport, shaking hands and making promises. A television crew came by and she told them just how much she cared for the taxpayer, in the tones of a man offering sympathy to the condemned. She opened an area business and walked in a parade and got noisily drunk in public while a businessman – or maybe another politician – or maybe a businessman – or a politician – or was there a difference? – handed her a bottle of ridiculously expensive wine and told her that this was just a little gift between friends with no obligations but if she didn’t back bill C-dj8QB3RT she was a dead woman walking who’d be turfed by an opponent with stronger patriotic feelings for the Mink Milking industry.
“I am behind this country five hundred percent because it is the best country in the world,” said Scal, who threw up behind a dumpster. “We need to put those bums to work.” Then she took a rest stop for a while, because her feet were really quite sore now. She’d walked up mountains and under the oceans without a blister, but these shoes were very pinchy and they were making her head swim. Or maybe that was the smog.
“I’m just going to put this all behind me,” she told the press. “Now is not the time for blame games and partisan politics, now is the time for action and I am willing to take that action and that action is to go for a walk in the woods. Goodbye.”
“But what about your responsibilities to the taxpayers?” asked a reporter.
“Well, I’m always something little guy voters,” said Scal, but her heart wasn’t in it. She must’ve walked at least a mile and a half in these shoes already, and the novelty had worn off as much as the soles of her feet had. “But the fact of the matter is that I’m bored stiff and you lot aren’t helping. Gales gut me you’re a tedious natter of toads.”
“Look, it’s my job,” said the reporter. “Why are you blaming me for doing my job? Do yours and we’ll talk.”
“I can do both, just you watch,” said Scal. And then she beat up the reporter and took his shoes on live television. And then, because they were HER shoes now, she reported on it.
“Corrupt councilsenatorMP(P) assaults reporter, drinks in public, makes molehills from mountain,” she noted. “Defrauds electorate I guess or whatever, corruption, sure.”
She wandered in her new shoes, stretched out her muscles a bit, shook her hands loose.
“Businessman eats baby: we bring you both sides of the problem,” she sketched as she watched old people argue on a new camera in a building born of an architect’s mid-life crisis. “Here are my thoughts as expressed in this column’s headline: UNACCEPTABLE Print isn’t dead because it isn’t because. Want to read a letter? Here’s someone’s letter. Here’s my opinion: both sides are to blame. My anecdote overheard in a diner in my twenties is an analogy and I will use it. Watch me.”
Scal got stuck halfway through her column and went for a walk to clear her head, shoes dangling around her neck. She’d walked a good few miles in a good few shoes, but it felt like something was missing. Oh, yes, it was lunch. She’d go home and pack something for the next leg of the trip. There were a lot of shoes out there, surely she couldn’t have gotten them all already.
“Could I please have my boots back?” asked the forester, as she rummaged through her house.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” said Scal absently. “There are lots, you know. Just take some. I have.”
“Yes,” said the forester with a wince. She had been keeping an eye on the news the past few hours and was really getting quite alarmed. “Look,you need to stop.”
“But I can’t stop yet,” complained Scal. “I haven’t walked a mile in everyone’s shoes yet!”
“Ah, but I misspoke when I advised you,” said the forester. “You shouldn’t walk a mile in anyone’s shoes at all.”
“Burn down buildings and boulders!” swore Scal. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“We don’t measure in miles anymore,” said the forester. “We use kilometres. If you want to walk in everyone’s shoes properly, you’ll need to walk a kilometer.”
Scal swore a swear that tore the ground new holes and left it blushing. “And start all over?!” she shrieked. “Nonsuch and nothing doing! You and your shoes – ALL of your shoes, and all of your yous – can go dig a pit to the Pacific and fall into it! I’m leaving!”
And she kicked off her shoes and walked into the woods with her head held high.
As a matter of fact, she held her head so high that she didn’t even see the poison ivy until it was up to her ankles. That – or at least two days past that – was when Scal the sorry walked the woods again.
She simply couldn’t be anything otherwise.