Lone Stripper Shoe-Napping: A Tale
Mary plopped down beside us in the bar, a blue Santa hat on her head.
It was the beginning of August, but I didn’t ask questions. We were in New York at the BlogHer10 conference and I had seen far stranger things by that point in the trip.
Tracy asked how Mary was doing. She smiled and lifted a single orange high heel shoe from her bag, placing it on the table amidst our drinks.
“I lost my other stripper shoe,” she said, gesturing toward the heel.
Immediately, I pulled out my phone, took a picture of the sexy heel, and Tweeted:
Tracy did the same.
It was suggested that she use her Lone Stripper Shoe as a beverage holder, so she did:
After a while of mingling and shouting over the loud music, I learned that @marymac is actually kind of a big deal. She is the blogger behind Pajamas and Coffee, and also a speaker at the BlogHer10 conference. We also met @ooph (Stefanie Mullen) who writes, well, Ooph.
Soon, the music was too loud, and it was getting late. Tracy, Michelle, and I decided to call it a night. Mary had wandered away from her lone stripper shoe (bad shoe parenting 101). Tracy picked it up, a devious gleam in her eyes.
A shoenapping plan was instantly hatched.
Initially, the plan was simply to shoe-nap the now-coined “Lone Stripper Shoe.” While we walked from the bar, I turned to Tracy and said, “It would be hilarious if we took pictures of the shoe in different places and tweeted Mary.”
So we did.
And it was a blast.
(Quick Twitter lingo lesson: @marymac is Mary, @onerebelmom is Tracy, and the #s you see are for people to search our tweets.)
Then, Tracy had to go and make a hostage situation out of it:
(I was bitter that I didn’t have the idea first.)
Finally, we rounded out the night by tucking Lone Stripper Shoe into bed. A funny little side story to this… we did have LSS tucked into bed with a “toy” we received from one of the naughtier swag bags, but figured that wouldn’t be appropriate. We chose this instead:
The next morning, I slid Lone Stripper Shoe into my bag. During breakfast, I received this message from Tracy:
This was where I was bummed that I wasn’t smart enough to hold the shoe hostage for more Twitter followers. (I have a piddly 290, for Heaven’s sake!) So, I countered with:
She had a point.
After breakfast, we found Mary who was getting ready to speak at her session. Shoe and owner were united, at last.
The Lone Stripper Shoe-napping was a highlight of my trip for BlogHer10. I think it brings new meaning to networking too… especially since I have received followers and messages from people who said they loved the shoenapping so much, they want us to find another shoe to steal.
Instigators, I tell ya.
In the end, it was an incredibly fun mini-adventure. It made it even better that Mary had such a great sense of humor about it. These are my kind of people.
Here Tracy and I are the day after the heist:
