UGG!

by Melodie Johnson Howe

I am trying to finish a short story before I leave for Vermont next week when the phone rings. It’s Lenore whom I’ll be visiting in Vermont. We have known each other since we were thirteen years old. She has called me every day with a weather report. It’s snowing, by the way. She also sends me pictures of said snow piled up around her house. This time Lenore has called to remind me to bring boots that I can wear in the snow. She explains that there can be ice under the soft powder and I could slip and fall. But at the same time she says for me not to waste my money on boots I can’t wear in Santa Barbara. We hang up. I try to go back to my short story. But all I can think of is evil ice lurking under pretty white snow. I don’t own a pair of boots that can confront such malevolence.

I go to Nordstrom’s shoe department. My head is still in my short story and I feel a little dazed to be out in the real world. I make my way to the boot section which seems to be filled with just one brand: Ugg. They are a sandy-colored suede boot with fleece lining and fleece cuff. And they are on sale. I begin to notice that most of the women shoppers already have Uggs on. They wear them with the legs of their tight jeans tucked into the boot so that the fleecy cuff shows. It’s eighty degrees outside! I think of Lenore’s words, “buy something you can wear in Santa Barbara.”

I squeeze in between two women who are sitting on a sofa trying on boots. They are surrounded by open Ugg boxes. They are telling each other how cute the boots look on their feet.

“Can you wear these in a place like Vermont?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” one assures me.

“And you can wear them here, too,” the other says.

I’m in shopper heaven. A boot that looks cute, that I can wear in California and Vermont. And it’s on sale!

I try on a pair. I stuff the hem of my black jeans into the boots. I stand. I start to walk. But I can’t. I feel like I have a furry ironing board on each foot. I look at the other women gliding across the Nordstrom’s carpet in their Uggs. I clomp across the floor. I fell like I’m already walking through a snow drift. I come to a noisy stop in front of a mirror. By tucking my trousers into the Uggs I have taken at least six inches off my height and made my legs look stubby. I can’t walk in these things, and they make me look like an aging elf.

I galumph around desperately looking for anything that isn’t an Ugg. I spy a lonely pair of boots the color of baby-poop brown with soles as thick as the tires on a Deere tractor. I lug them back to my little space between the two women. I show my new find to the frazzled saleslady. She drags off to get my size as I struggle out of my Uggs.

Waiting for the saleslady to return I begin to feel a little superior to the other women. No Uggs for me. I am an individualist. I have my own style thank you very much. I smugly think how the name Ugg sounds like the word “ugh.”

The saleslady comes out with an enormous box stamped: UGG. She opens the box and out come the brown boots. She drops them with a loud thud on the floor and hurries off to help another Ugger. I let out a deep sigh. The women on either side of me sneer at my choice.

I examine my boots. They’re not lined with the fluffy feminine fleece like the others. They’re lined with something flat and curly that looks like my poodle when she’s wet. I pull them on. I stand. I take a nervous first step. I can walk! They’re actually comfortable. I look at myself in the mirror. My boots are beautifully butch! I feel strong. These macho babies can take on any evil ice that comes my way. No prissy fleeced-cuff boots for me.

I break out into a sweat. I’m hot!

I sit down and tug the boots off. The saleslady returns.

“These are very warm. What are they lined with?” I ask her wiping sweat from my forehead.

“Sherpa.”

“Sherpa, isn’t that a person who leads you up a Tibetan mountain?”

“It’s a kind of fur like shearling.”

“Do you recommend them for California?”

She shrugs. In shoe body language that means no.

“Vermont?”

“Perfect.”

“How much are they on sale?”

“Oh, they’re not on sale.”

I let out another sigh. “I’ll take them.”

I watch a man stroll by carrying Christmas packages. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and Uggs! What’s wrong with these people?! Have they gone mad? Have I entered another world called Uggland? Telling me she has run out of shopping bags, the saleslady thrusts the enormous Ugg box at me. As I wrestle it out of the store, women shoppers smile at me in a knowing way. A kind of secret Ugg grin that acknowledges we are all one in the fleece-lined world of consumerism. But I want to shake my butch boots at them and say I’m not one of you. I didn’t buy my Uggs on sale! And I can’t wear my Uggs in California!

I return to my desk and my short story. Where was I? The dénouement. The phone rings. It’s Lenore again. Something about a muffler. I’m sure she’s not referring to that thing on a car. She says I need it to wrap around my mouth and nose. Mouth and nose? I hang up. I’m not going back out to Uggland. I’m staying in my own sane world dealing with murder, blackmail, betrayal, and characters who don’t wear furry boots in Southern California.