9 Tripping Shoes

On the 9th day of Christmas my true loves gave to me, 9 strategically placed shoes to trip on.

They must have had a strategy in the placement of said shoes because I tripped on almost every one of them. It doesn't help that the family shoe depository is near the entrance to the hallway. I don't know why they would want to trip their dear mother, so I can only attribute it to part of the creation of an imaginary castle where I'm the ogress trying to overstep the moat only to be thwarted by pointy rubber teeth and leathery black tongues, some with entwining cotton tendrils designed to strangle unsuspecting bare toes. I also don't know what these shoes might be protecting but I can only imagine something of a most valuable nature, chocolate, a Light Saber armory, Princess Leia, or "the last melon." Whatever it was, I was not meant to pass and see, and have suffered several popped toe joints and a reminder that gravity is still a powerful force in nature.