The Tale of the Missing Shoes: A True Story with a Real Lesson

It was Saturday, October 13 at 8:45 in the morning. (I know, because I just checked my phone!)
I was at the church, ironing a bride's maid dress, thinking all was right with the world.
Then my phone rang.
It was one of my sons, calling to ask if I knew where my other son's shoes were. And I'm all, "I don't know! Ask him. They're his shoes..." But, as it was further explained to me, the reason for the calling son's call was because the other son had no idea where said shoes were to be found. And he thought I might know. My only response was, I hadn't seen them since we bought them. (Remember the really great story about the amazing deal I got on the boys' suits? Well, that was the last time I had laid eyes on the shoes. I figured they went to my son's room with him when we got home.)
And with that, our phone call was over.
The next half hour involved three more calls (from the son-missing-shoes) wanting to know if I was sure I didn't know where they were, and what should he do if he couldn't find them? I held back on my desire to ask why this son had waited until the morning of the wedding to get his things together, but I did manage to offer an answer he didn't like, anyway. When he asked, "What do I wear???" and I said, "I dunno. Tennis shoes?" he, uh, hung up on me.

In the end, he showed up to the church looking great. The gray tennis shoes were hardly even noticeable in contrast to his nice suit and amazing good looks. *wink* And the rest of the day went off without a hitch. (OK, the photographer lost an SD card which contained all the pictures taken before the ceremony, but apparently that has been located. So, it's all good.)
HOWEVER, we still had the unanswered question of where those shoes were located. I admit, when I got home I began looking for them, too. And continued with the alertness for days. Eventually, I determined that in the middle of the busynes of buying suits and ties and stuff - and considering we were checking out as the store was closing (so there was a bit of an added hustle) - we must have inadvertantly left behind the package with the shoes in it. Oops!!!
So, the other day I finally got around to calling the store to ask if they *might* have an extra pair of shoes in their inventory. Ya know, like the shoes somebody bought four weeks ago, but didn't miss until TWO weeks ago, so they got put back on the shelf, maybe? The manager with whom I was speaking told me to just bring in the receipt sometime (Because I couldn't decipher the codes to tell her over the phone what item number went with the shoes in question.) and they would "take care of it". I didn't know how they would do it, but if bringing in the receipt would solve my problem, I was all for it.
And that night I took in the receipt, and my embarassing little story of not realizing for two weeks that we didn't bring home everything we purchased.

The rest of the story goes like this: The manager on duty graciously listened to my tale of woe, and proceeded to enter each item number on my receipt into the computer - to find out if the missing shoes were in the store somewhere. And, when he got to the end of the list we discovered the shoes weren't on the receipt at all!
Apparently, in the hustle to get us through check-out and out of the store that fateful night, the shoes in question never got scanned, bagged, or paid for. And since a certain son of mine didn't care to care for his packages that night (or any time between then and the wedding...) the missing (never-purchased) shoes went completely unnoticed.
Probably got re-shelved the next morning. *exasperated sigh*

Annnnd, the moral of the story is, uh, two-fold, really.
1. Always check your bags.
2. Don't wait until the last minute to get your stuff together.