The Red Shoes

There is quite a history to those words, which I never expected to find when I Googled them. Down below the Macy's and Zappo's ads for red shoes, I found the Hans Christian Anderson story upon which a 1948 movie about a ballerina was based. Considering the fact that the little girl in the story had her feet chopped off, (I always thought Grimm's fairy tales were the,er, grim ones, but Hans Christian Anderson isn't all about little mermaids either) the shoes on the feet of Dr. Peng seemed an odd choice. Perhaps he was trying to highlight the fact that he looks about twelve years old, but that wasn't particularly reassuring.

We had been told to be prepared to spend the day, as this was a MOH's procedure, designed to remove as little tissue as possible from OilMan's temple.

The red shoes, did allow the young doctor to whirl from the "bedside" to the computer behind him and back again with the speed and grace of a ballerina, and he had the tumor out and into its little specimen jar in no time, and we were hustled off to the waiting room to await developments. As we sat in the room with coffee, juice and snacks, three more people with bandages on their faces were ushered in. Apparently the red shoes also allowed Dr. Peng to race from room to room with the speed of a gazelle.

Fortunately for us, he got the entire tumor out the first try, so stitched up and sporting a large white bandage on his head, I was escorting OilMan home after a mere two and a half hours.

I doubt if Dr. Peng ever read the fairy tale, but apparently he knew something about the properties of his bright red Nikes, because he still has his feet, and OilMan's boyish good looks are unlikely to be terribly marred.