What’s the significance of lost shoes?
I’m watching the local news coverage of a tragic fatal accident and once again, the television cameras have zoned in on a lone shoe, this time a sneaker with the laces still tied, laying in debris on the side of the road.
They do it with non-fatal car crashes, too. Anytime the scene of an accident includes a lost shoe, the cameras linger on the shoe as if to imply that the accident was so severe, that shoe just flew plum off the victim’s foot and landed way over there.
The shoe is an unknown variable. They never say that is the victim’s shoe or that it was actually on the victim’s foot at the time of the crash, how it came off or got where it landed. It could have been one of a spare pair kept in the car and flew out a window on impact or it could have a shoe dropped by someone else, could have laid there for days. It really makes me wonder when the laces on a sneaker are still tied as logically speaking, at least in my head, I can’t see how a laced up shoe comes off by itself during an accident without an amputated foot inside.
Maybe our local cameraman has a shoe lace for a heart string? Perhaps focusing on the shoe gives the cameraman a diversion, a moment to silently cry inside after filming a horrific scene? Maybe it is to emphasize the loss of a life, to drive home the point that this victim was a young person who will never run and play again.
Maybe my zoning in on the shot of the shoe, writing about these lost shoes, is my own diversion from the tragic sadness of hearing such news.
Thanks for reading today.
Barnbees 