left is left coz right is right!

once i came upon a lone shoe on the beach, from the rim of which my friend the crab was peeping out, much like the captain of a submarine scouting the horizon from his ship’s conning tower. espyin my approach, he tried to scare me off. “shoo!” he yelled at me. not one to be intimidated by idle “shoos”, i walked right up to him and kneeling down to reassure him of my non-violent intents, said with some bite in my voice, “exactly! shoe’s the word. here’s one shoe left. it’s not even left high and dry, it’s lying low and wet. now, question is, where’s the other shoe? i don’t like to see things single that were built to be a couple.”  “exactly!” cried out the crab triumphantly, like some downscaled, high pitched echo, “this shoe that’s left had the right shoe as his partner, but didn’t know how to treat her right. so she left.” now this was confusin. i’m pretty good at directions: i know the sun rises in the east and sets in california. but right-left leaves me clueless. which is why i was never a good pugilist – i could never make out a right jab from a left hook. me, i prefer to stay in the center. the perfect center. i’m so much a center guy that people even praise me for my ec-center-icity, if i have the right word. “that guy,” they say with feeling, “he’s so self-centered!” only i don’t like their tone when they say it – negative, kind of. maybe that’s why they keep sending me to all those centers. but all that’s besides the point. i just don’t like to see that rendered asunder, what the good god had intended to be eternally entwined and always walking together. so i nagged the crab again. “just how do you mean, the right shoe left?” “you see,” said the crab, as if explaining things to a mongoloid monkey with dyslexia, “the left shoe that’s left was addressing the right shoe as she was coming right up on to the beach from the sea. “hey, shoe,” he yells. and she gets all riled and walks away. i mean, how much can a right shoe take?". “whoa, wait a minute!” i blocked the crab off, now the situation having been crystalinely clarified in my mind. i’m pretty daft – or is it deft? – at making a spot of argument when something as silly as this mix up happens. “crab, tell me, how else do you hail a shoe? do you say, “hey, butterfly?”” i asked, voice dripping with unconcealed sarcasm. “that’s exactly how,” said the crab, quite smugly. “when you’re hailing the right shoe, you don’t yell “shoe!”, you say, in a cooin, matey voice, your smoothest and sincerest, “oh, here’s my darling shoe, the lace of my eyelets! you’re oh so right for me!” or words to that effect. instead, he screams “shoe!”, she hears “shooo!” and she shooed right away. that’s how he’s now left, without any rights.”

i understood. a simple misunderstanding, but then, a grave error of etiquette on the part of the shoe that was left. the right shoe, she was always right.

but i couldn’t help thinking, must be heart breaking to be just left, right?