Sandals: A Mystery

Sandals: A Mystery

by Michael Espinoza



I put this question to you: how do you call footwear which
Has bottom, but which doesn't have a top, so when you itch,
It's easier to scratch it?  I thought "sandal" was the word,
For growing up that was the only term of which I'd heard.

Yet now, within my family even, seems that only I
Would call them "sandals"--other people call same footwear by
Some words, like "flip-flops", which in childhood I had never heard,
Or--though describing different footwear--"slippers" is the word.

How can it be?  If even my own family doesn't call
This footwear "sandals", how could I have learned the term at all?
Or rather, how could I have used it as the term preferred,
If everybody else would use a different kind of word?

The only other explanation I can think to say
Is I'm the only one who didn't change my mind one day
And start to call them differently where "sandal" was the word
That I'd used in my childhood when it's that which I preferred.