The Master’s Shoe

We are all entitled to our own superstitions, but some people take them too seriously. This is what really happened (BIP never makes things up, no matter how uncommon they seem) when a young inesquian brought his lucky shoes on the day he was going to present his master’s dissertation.

So far, nothing odd (I mean…), if it weren’t for the fact that the shoes were completely torn up when he got to INESC Porto. Literally torn up - and the photo proves it. It was raining, the material was poor, I mean… the shoes were completely worn out, but … the finishing touch were those white socks, which everyone could seee when he sat down and crossed his legs, also showing that pieces of the shoe’s sole were missing...

The creative researcher, confronted by his colleagues’ merrymaking, realised that maybe the shoes weren’t so lucky after all (what if the jury saw his Achilles’ heel…?), and so he started a painstaking and desperate quest in search of a little shoe that could fit his singular size 45 (size 11) shoe.

The task was hard, but at INESC Porto, there is no such thing as an impossible thing, although sometimes things don’t happen they way they do in fairy tales: instead of a shoe finding its foot, here, the Cinderella had to go and find a slipper.

After wearing out the socks (yes, because the soles were completely gone already) going back and forth at the Power Systems Unit in search of the shoe that could fit his gigantic foot, the young man finally found someone kind enough to borrow a pair of shoes that fit. And he passed the test… (the place was crowded and someone in the audience with big feet was… barefoot).

This is a happy ending for the Cinderella with an Achilles’ heel, but, let us hope (for the sake of the good-doer), without athlete’s foot.