Ever Get Pissed and Toss A Shoe?

I know that the shelf-life on the "shoe story" is about over.



But I'm very obsessed with it. Not so much because of the symbolism behind, the Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi's, act. He did it to express his outrage that George Bush could even show his face in a country he had no business invading.

I agree with the public consensus that this is a very strange and sad commentary of our nation's involvement in Iraq, and was not amused that President Bush got a rise from it after ducking two shoes aimed at his head. I'm sure Dana Perino didn't find the event amusing, considering the nice shiner she got out of the deal. I wonder if she'll file a claim with the Veteran's Administration claiming she was wounded in the line of duty.

I know what her boss would say to this: "So? So what?"

What I'm still trying to figure out is how Al-Zaidi missed. Twice!

I may give Muntader a call to discuss the finer points of shoe tossing. I know a thing or two about that.


You see, way back when I was a wee Spartacusito in kindergarten, I had this thing against taking afternoon naps. I hated them about as much as Muntader hates the President.

I didn't know this then, but I was probably one of those kids that would have ended up being diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. My mother recently told me that, as a kid, I was hyper, petulant, and quite moody. People who know me now would probably ask: So what's changed?

Anyway, on one particular afternoon, my teacher at P.S. 140 politely asked me to take a nap. I said "No. I'm not tired." Like any five-year old, I held firm to the sound logic that says one takes naps only when they're tired and not immediately after they've had lunch and a 30-minute recess. Of course, I was at the mercy of my teacher's dictatorial benevolence, which I learned on this particular day, had its limits.

My memory is quite vague on how my teacher finally got me to take off my sneakers and lay down on the cot. What I clearly remember was her turning her back on me as she walked to her desk. That's when I got up out of my cot, walked to my cubby, grabbed one of my sneakers and flung it, nailing her right on the back of her noggin. It was probably no more than a six- to eight-foot toss, but the way I remember it, I was two miles away with an artillery spotter near the target giving me coordinates corrected for wind speed and direction.

Again, please forgive me for not recalling every detail of this shoe-tossing incident. Technology being what it was in early 1968, there was no YouTube serving site video of this surgical strike. And given the events of that year, it's easy to see how a story of a kid nailing his teacher with a shoe didn't cross Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News desk.

But my mom and dad made the story a top priority. Unlike our dear Mr. President, they didn't blithely pass it off and say "So? So What?"

I wonder if Muntader got his ass kicked like I did.