I fell this morning. I was running late and stepped on a small rock in the driveway as I hustled to my vehicle. My ankle turned, my arms flailed wildly, and for a fleeting moment I thought I’d saved myself. I was wrong. I went down like a ton of bricks (bricks wrapped in a fashionable maxi dress, of course) and skinned my knee in a patch about 4 inches square. As I lay on the ground, glancing around to make sure nobody saw me, I became furious. This is the third time I’ve fallen in the last year. Once was due to ice in the parking lot at work, which couldn’t be helped. What made me so mad about the other two tumbles is that I was wearing flip-flops both times. On the face of it, I realize this seems like a silly thing to be upset over. The thing is – I love high heels. I wear them four or five days a week, be they platform, wedge, or stiletto. I never fall. Yet, put me in a flip flop and apparently I’m roadkill. Is it possible that my body has come to rely on heels so much that I can’t function in a flat shoe? Clearly, the only way to properly test my hypothesis is to experiment by buying more shoes. For science!

-Tiffany Blair, LBSPY 36 (July 1-15)