I didn't manage a #ThrowbackThursday post last week because I was too busy having lunch and gossiping with Bridie of bridiemarie.com so this is a bumper edition.

How's this one, circa July 1997.

Werk!

Cara de who now?

Derp

We hear a lot about the dangers of shoes; frail ankles teetering in towering stilettos, pain shooting from spindly supports, blisters, bunions, cramps, slippery soles, aching backs, hamstrung hocks and ghett-toes.

This weekend just gone, I literally fell victim to these evil things:

I want your SOLE!

What could be so dangerous about these innocuous slippers? They have cherries entwined in a cute heart motif! They were $7 from Kmart! How evil could they be?

RUINED pedicure

This hasn't even come out yet

Not pictured: elbows I can't straighten or bend properly because they took the full 60+ kilogram weight of me hitting the concrete like a sack of Dynamic Lifter.

So what happened?

I bought these slippers at the start of winter and wore them happily for a few weeks until I noticed they were flopping around a bit on my feet. I had worn them in and the inside padding had become compressed so they were looser. I thought to myself, "This could be dangerous. We have lots of stairs and levels in our house and I might kick a stair and fall over."

I used this as an excuse to buy some boot-style slippers, thus (also from Kmart)

Safety boots

Did I throw out the old ones though? Of course not. So when we were heading outside on Sunday morning, I quickly slipped my feet into these snuggly pink purveyors of doom because it was quicker than the five more seconds it would have taken to pull on the boots and went to join my husband and daughter up in the front yard.


Observe the incident scene:


The dangling slipper catches, driving my right toe hard into the step and propelling me with considerable force into the concrete, knocking the wind out of me with a most indelicate "urghfff".

Try to move. Can't.

Pain. Toenail is caught in slipper.

Call out to husband who comes running with daughter in tow. He gently extracts my slipper from my busted toenail and sits me up while I get myself together. Meanwhile the toddler, who has dutifully kissed my already-bruising shin better and declared it "all good" has tripped over the small top step pictured and bashed her chin.

Her shoes were not to blame for the incident.

Espirit pyjamas from ASOS

Time to jump forward now, to Melbourne in March 2000.


Yes.

Yes, they are pink vinyl snakeskin pants and I'm not sorry.

"The HELL were you thinking?" I hear you ask, in perhaps a more forceful tone than is necessary.

Snakeskin was so in at the time, it's today's leopard-print. And one day, on my way home from work, I passed one of those cheapy Chinese chain stores with cheapy Chinese chain clothes in it and these were on a rack out the front (in various fun colours) for $18. 

"Well, I'm not spending $18 on such a frivolous thing," I thought.

The next week, they had been marked down to $10 and the rest is Throwback Thursday fodder.

I remember I sat on them for a while (not literally) as there really aren't too many places you can rock a pair of pink vinyl snakeskin pants, even in the year 2000. Finally, an opportunity came up when we had a work "girl's dinner" so out they came, teamed with a white cowl-neck sleeveless top with glitter stripes and chiffon overlay (one of the few sleeveless tops I've ever loved), matching metallic pink nails, some silver jewellery, a Boy London watch, a horrible nylon fake hair scrunchie with pale pink bits in and sketchy fringe in full effect as always. Seriously, why didn't any of my friends ever stage an intervention??

It annoys me that I can't remember what shoes I'm wearing but I'll bet anything they were some type of platform.

And what am I holding so proudly?

It's a small Chinese temple intricately carved out of carrot, of course.

I'm ashamed to say that I did, on a dare much later in the night, bite the top off it. Not entirely convinced it *was* carrot. Tasted kind of . . . waxy.

An interesting fact about this night was that before we left work, we sat and watched Cathy Freeman win the gold medal for the 800 metres track at the Sydney Olympics (which helped me date the photo).

The pants made only one other public appearance after this night at a "Shoot 'Em Up" cowboy/cowgirl themed event, styled with white button up shirt tied at the naval and a custom-made cowgirl hat with pink glitter stars on it that I still occasionally find amongst my stored stuff today. 

I do wish I'd kept them in The Vault as a historical piece though, just for the LOLs. Still I have a photo and now that I've immortalised it in Throwback Thursday history, so do you.

You're welcome!