Dr. Shoe

by

12/01/2011

Neighborhood: Uncategorized, Upper West Side

The next time your life coach tells you to reinvent yourself, think of this.

During the years I worked on West 57th Street, I would sometimes browse in Daffy’s, a discount department store. I grew to expect to see (and hear) a certain salesperson who roamed the women’s shoe department, intoning, “Doctor Shoe here! Doctor Shoe is in the house! We’ve
got your sandals, your pumps, your mules, your boots! If you don’t see it, come see Doctor Shoe.”

At some point I realized I hadn’t seen him in a while. In his continuing absence, silence in the shoe aisles replaced his litany. Had he been laid off? transferred to a different… clinic?

One morning, walking to work, I reached the corner of 96th Street and Central Park West and
waited a moment for the light to change. I didn’t so much as glance at the man who stood nearby, handing out flyers for a local mini-storage company. But as the light changed and I proceeded, a familiar voice rang out, “Doctor Storage is in the house!”

Lisa Bergtraum is a New Yorker, a would-be writer and artist, working as an information specialist (librarian/researcher, whathaveyou). She also likes to run ( 5-time finisher of the NYC Marathon) and bake.

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