Why Is It Always The Left Shoe?

An L.A. Mystery

Here's a column I wrote about a zillion years ago.  It  first appeared in the Century City News, and then the Los Angeles Herald Examiner on April 16, 1982.  I found a copy in my dad's file cabinet.

   A strange Los Angeles phenomenon has come to my attention lately, leaving me at a loss for some reasonable explanation. Why do people discard their running shoes in the middle of the street? Why is it almost always the left shoe? I can't figure out what is going on. Is everything in this fast-food world that disposable?
   Every day I drive down Olympic on my way to work, and at least once every other week discover (or nearly run over) an abandoned shoe. It just lies there, lost and all alone. Once in a great while, I'll see the right shoe several blocks away, in a similar state of degradation. I suddenly feel a wild urge to leap out of my car and rescue the neglected shoe so I can reunite it with its mate. But something always stops me from committing this act of humanity, if that's the right word. Should I be so rash as to open my door in traffic, I, too, might lose my left shoe, or maybe my right, and several parts of my anatomy. Why tamper with fate?
   What mystifies me is that I never actually see the culprit in action, tossing his or her sneaker recklessly to the wind. I just don't understand how this odd disrobing occurs. Here's one possible scenario:
   It's early morning. In the distance appears a lone runner, preparing for his next 10K event. The theme from "Chariots of Fire" surges out of his Walkman radio. Transcending his pain, he imagines himself on the beach, running in cinematic slow motion through the surf. As the music swells, his left foot strikes a huge wad of bubble gum, which grips his sole and tears the shoes off his foot. Failing to notice, the runner -- and the music -- fade into the distance.
   But in my search for the truth, I realize this hypothesis makes no sense. No runner in his right mind could fail to notice the disappearance of a shoe during a recession. Have you priced Nikes lately?
   If this weird phenomenon gripping the city were occurring only on the streets, I might not be as alarmed. But here's the scary part: It's spreading to the sidewalks. A while back, my friend and I were walking in Century City, and we came across one cowboy boot, right in the middle of the pavement. Can you imagine that? One damn cowboy boot -- for the left foot, of course, sitting there helplessly, without a foot to call its own. My friend, a sucker for the downtrodden, gently tried on the boot, only to find it was a size too small. We were stumped. What could we do with one man's cowboy boot, probably made from the skin of an endangered species? I'm ashamed to say we left it there on the sidewalk, hoping its irresponsible owner would one day come back to reclaim it.

    All of this sole-searching has launched me on a new research project which, much to my dismay, no one seems willing to fund. I'm trying to establish a link between UFO sightings and abandoned shoes. If anyone out there has information, please contact me care of the Foundation for Homeless Shoes. Thank you.