Creative Writing: Long-Stemmed Shoes

Online Writing Class Assignment: Write a 250-word description of a person - real or fictional - built around a single hyperbole. As always, I have not changed anything from the original assignment. Nothing has been edited based on comment or critique.

Long-Stemmed Shoes

Emily is as vain as a peacock. She doesn’t have to be. She has black hair, green eyes, and the body of a Victoria’s Secret model. She was given that body by God, not a plastic surgeon; I know because I’m her sister and I’ve watched it develop since preschool. She doesn’t see it that way, and going anywhere with her requires a two-hour notice…one hour if we go to the gym, and I promise that isn’t a second hyperbole.

We bought the same pair of five-inch heels. I wore mine to a trendy tapas bar for a birthday party. I wobbled from the parking garage into the restaurant, and I only had to stop twice along the way to prevent myself from tipping forward into the pavement. When I got inside, I found a chair and vowed not to leave it. My friend wanted a photo of the attendees, and I made them all crowd around me.

Emily wore the shoes to our uncle’s funeral. She was late, and when she saw everyone waiting for her, she sprinted to us. When it was time for her speech, she wound her way through the pew of relatives and glided to the podium. How easily she walked across the stage in those long-stemmed shoes! I wouldn’t walk across the street in them; you couldn’t pay me to walk across a stage.

I decided I should start practicing walking in those shoes. Just in case we ever wear them at the same time, I don’t want it to look like Ugly Betty meeting Carrie Bradshaw. Maybe vanity does pay off sometimes.