The Clumsy Decorator

The Clumsy Decorator

Amy owned a modest little decorating business in downtown New York. One day, she was called to replace the wallpaper in an apartment block that had been damaged by a burst water main. She grabbed her brushes, scissors and sachets of extra strength wall paper adhesive and made her way to the fourteenth floor. She was wearing her usual paint stained white coveralls along with her favourite comfy pair of brown Ugg boots, which she was wearing without socks as it was over thirty degrees outside. She met with the buildings superintendent, who gave her the paper he wished to be hung up in the ruined rooms. Wanting to get started straight away, Amy began mixing her extra strength wall paper paste in one of her paint trays and laid the paper along a flimsy fold up table she had found in the damp room. Grabbing her paste brush, she slathered the first piece of paper in paste and moved to hang it on the wall.

However as she stepped towards the bare wall, she nudged the tray with her booted foot without realising and a huge dollop of extra strength adhesive spilled onto the floor. Amy hung the piece of paper and moved back to the table to cut and paste another. She walked over to hang the second piece of paper and stepped into the rapidly drying paste on the floor. She spent a few seconds lining the paper up before she attempted to walk back to the table, but her feet wouldn’t move. She looked down and saw that the soles of her Ugg’s were stuck to the bare floor boards. Amy tried pulling her feet away from the floor, but her boots would only rise a few millimetres from the wooden surface, brown tendrils of sticky paste clinging to her trapped feet. After a couple of minutes of pointless struggling that made her extremely hot and tired, Amy decided the only way she could escape would be to relieve herself of her shoes. After a little bit of wriggling, Amy’s small and pale bare feet slipped free of the loose fitting boots. She stepped back onto clean floor boards behind her and felt the relaxing coolness make contact with her smooth bare soles.

After a couple of minutes of just staring at her well formed toes with pink painted toe nails in complete disbelief, Amy submitted to an urge to finish the room barefoot before attempting to retrieve her trapped footwear. She switched her MP3 player on and began to wiggle her liberated toes to the music as she began to cut another piece of paper for the wall. The comfortable coolness that seemed to emanate from the carpet less floor seemed to intertwine itself between Amy’s sumptuous toes as she worked and stroked its metaphorical fingers along her delicate arches and seemed to pool by her well formed and slightly pink heels. The sensation running along Amy’s bare feet was ecstatic and she began to wonder more and more about why the hell she bothered to wear shoes in summer at all. After the papering was finished, Amy began to open the tins of paint she would need to decorate the remaining walls in the small two room apartment. As she prised the lid off the can of sunshine yellow paint, a small amount sloshed over her shoeless feet. The creamy texture of the paint oozed itself between her bare toes like the finest of foot creams and she moved over to the wall that needing painting.

As she looked back at the completed wall, Amy noticed she had left small yellow foot prints all over the bare floor boards. Panicking, she phoned the superintendent, who said he would be up immediately. The superintendent looked at the cute yellow foot prints with a grin on his face and turned to face the stressed young decorator. “Don’t worry my dear, I love the quirky originality of the prints, could you do them in different colours as well” Dumbstruck, Amy nodded and the Super left with a spring in his step. Amy grabbed some more paint trays and poured all the different colours she had available into them. Taking a deep breath, Amy placed her bare foot into a tray of sky blue paint and felt the soothing and creamy texture easing itself between her toes like custard. She stepped into a tray of green paint with her other foot and began to walk in random directions throughout the apartment. After a few minutes, she stepped onto some newspaper she had set up near the apartment door and grabbed a cloth from her overalls pocket. Lifting her left foot, Amy ran the cloth over her paint covered soles and giggled as the material mercilessly tickled her bare feet. She began to laugh uncontrollably as she ran the cloth between her sensitive toes and had to put her arm against the door frame to stop herself falling over.

After she had cleaned herself up, Amy walked over to where her boots lay stuck in the wallpaper adhesive. She tried once again to pull them free but they were stuck tight and no matter what she used to try and prize them from the floor, they would not budge. The superintendent returned and observed Amy trying to retrieve her stuck shoes. “Erm excuse me young lady, but are those shoes stuck to the floor?” Amy turned to face the Super with a look of panic on her face “Oh I’m so sorry sir, my boots got stuck in the wallpaper paste. I don’t care about the boots, but I feel terrible about ruining your floor” The Super broke into a kind grin “Don’t worry my dear, let them be a monument to this fantastic floor style you’ve created in here. Would you like me to bring you a pair of my wife’s shoes so you can finish the rest of the rooms?” Amy thought about this a moment, but a cheeky glance at her gorgeous bare feet helped her to make her decision. “I’ll be ok Sir, my feet were too hot in those boots anyway”

After finishing the rest of the apartment block barefoot, Amy made a dash across the car park with her equipment. The asphalt was warm and coarse and it felt as if Amy were walking over hot coals as she crossed it without her boots. She could feel the small stones begin to poke at the supple skin on her heels and arches and Amy found herself lifting her toes up with each step to avoid the hot prodding of the asphalt. However after she had clambered into her van and brushed the loose stones off her now slightly dusty soles, she felt the coolness of the vans pedals underfoot and decided that she would never ever wear shoes to work again.