ralph was laid off from his job, and he had nothing much to do all day.
he had a vague idea that there was something wrong with watching television before noon. he could not have said where he got this idea, he just had it.
he would get up in the morning and get a cup of coffee at a diner or at mcdonalds or dunkin donuts. he found a bench in front of a little wooded area beside a bus station, and he would sit on it with his cup of coffee and sometimes a donut or a danish pastry, and watch the world go by.
people would walk by.
ralph did not look at their faces because he thought he might accidentally make eye contact with them, and he did not want them to think he was some kind of creepy person.
so he found himself looking at their feet. he noticed that almost everybody wore dark colored shoes, black, or dark shades of brown and blue and green, whether they wore real old-fashioned shoe shoes, or more often, some sort of sneakers or running or athletic shoes. occasionally women or girls wore red shoes, but not very often.
very few people wore white shoes at all, not even athletic shoes, and ralph never saw anybody wearing white shoe shoes.
ralph thought that was kind of odd. he thought white shoes were kind of stylish, even though he never actually wore them himself.
he decided to try a thought experiment.
he would sit on his bench and and will, with his brain waves, people to start wearing white shoes. he would try it for two or three weeks and see how it went.
it would be something halfway interesting to do, and it might also help clear up another matter. like many people, ralph had often wondered if he was the only person in the world, and if the world only existed in his mind. if he could will people to wear white shoes, maybe that would go a long way to answering the question.
after almost a whole month, there was no uptick in the number of people wearing white shoes. if anything, there were even fewer people wearing them.
then one day, a young woman was walking by ralph’s bench and he inadvertently made eye contact with her.
“excuse me, miss, ” ralph blurted out.
“yes?’ the young woman asked, hesitantly.
“do you know why more people don’t wear white shoes?” ralph asked her.
“what!” and she scurried away without a backward look. ralph did not blame her. she must have thought i was some sort of psycho weirdo, he thought.
what was he thinking? how could he have said such a thing? maybe she would come back - with a police person!
ralph got up and began walking back to his apartment as quickly as he could without running. maybe i am a psycho, he thought. he had seen movies and tv shows and read stories where the protagonist had blackouts and was some kind of serial killer or wolfman… maybe that was him!
ralph began staying in his apartment more. he began watching tv before noon, and found he enjoyed it, especially “the view”.
eventually he got another job. he made the acquaintance of a guy named joe, who did the same job, and one day they were sitting in the break room and ralph gave joe a brief account of his thought experiment with the white shoes, though without mentioning his encounter with the young woman.
“i see people with white shoes all the time,” joe told him. “you must have just been in the wrong neighborhood.”
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