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.