The shoe was there, on the main street of that poor town hidden in the mountain. The strange shoe attracted and repelled every person that came close to it. Nobody could assure if it was a man or woman's shoe. Its thick heel could be taken as a sign of a man wearing it, but the soft curve of the sides screamed: woman, woman, without a doubt!
So, from the first moment, each one of the inhabitants of town came closer to examine that weird object. The reason they gave was that they wanted to make sure it didn't belong to them (they already knew that) but the reality was very different, it was imperative to discover who had left the shoe in the road.
That was not a joke, it was a serious matter because the gathered information would be used to complete (and to increase) the gossip about it around town.
One could notice that even in that distant town there were people specialized in solving these matters, anything better than a gossiper to solve a mystery of that type, because they dug even in the other's garbage to find the "truth". However, the problem now was that they declared themselves incapable to solve the mystery.
Oh my Goodness! Nosy people declaring themselves incapable to discover who the owner’s shoe was a sign the people of the town hoped never receive. It was a sign of the end of times.
However, a smart child suggested a new hypothesis, which was much worse for many people. What if the owner of the shoe was an infiltrated? The town had accomplished a certain level of self-sufficiency and the contact with the neighboring towns was very rare. The so-called highway was not good to travel comfortably. It had been opened a long time ago, so long ago that every witness to that impressive incident had made his last trip… to the cemetery behind the church.
Therefore, everybody hated traveling because the famous highway had started to fall in pieces three months after the opening and the grass began to grow freely among the pieces. They decided then to use the rural trails instead of wasting their time repairing the road.
The town had become so isolated that, if it was not easy to leave, it was almost impossible to get there. A popular statement in the town affirmed that someone new arrived every time a donkey died, meaning with this that it never happened. That's why they got scared when they heard the new theory about the fool object.
They summoned everybody to a general meeting to decide what they would do about the shoe. It was not that they hated strangers, they just didn't like the idea of people getting to the town and settled down among them without they noticed it… they were a democracy, damn it! … But democracy has its rules.
After an exhaustive meeting, they opted for a technique they called “Cinderella": Everybody in town will try the shoe. Every inhabitant was going to be summoned for such event, and they will try the shoe in each foot because the shoe was strange enough not to show which foot would fit… and, in that way, to finally solve the mystery.
Everybody came to the meeting because they wanted to prove their innocence. The peace they used to enjoy was long gone, they had started to distrust their neighbors as well, and that was insufferable.
When the last inhabitant tried the shoe and it was proved it wasn't his, a sepulchral silence invaded the place. It was then when they heard somebody cracking with laughter.
The local baker was laughing and laughing, in such a way that the people close to him got scared because they thought he was suffering a heart attack. But it wasn't the case and, finally, he calmed down and was able to explain the reason of his laughter.
He then told a story about him starting to make shoes; he was learning to do so little by little, as a hobby. That was a way for him to have fun and got him out of the routine. One day, he created a very weird shoe, the one giving everybody such a hard time.
One day, he decided to visit a friend and he took the shoe with him in order to show it to his friend but he dropped the shoe without him noticing it. When he was looking for it, he realized it was too late; somebody else had found it and started the problem.
The whole town then, demanded him why he didn't say something from the beginning. The man answered a smile in his face, that he was curious about how far they would push that simple matter. His experiment showed him the whole town went crazy about a tiny incident.
Having said that, everybody calmed down and, kind of ashamed went back to his normal life, not without whispering among them about the big disappointment they suffered when discovered that the so-called mystery was no more than a bad taste joke. A joke made without thinking, but a joke after all.
The baker was even more shocked whey he knew the people longed for the shoe mystery and that they had included a special prayer in the daily ones: Send us another shoe, Lord..
