I got stuck in my boots today.
Well, to be more clear: my left foot got stuck in my left boot. The zipper had been on the fritz for a few days and I knew I needed to take it to the cobbler, but I thought I had a few more days before it would really give out. A few of the zipper’s teeth had become more and more buck-toothed, if you’ll allow the metaphor, and it kept getting stuck in the middle. If I pulled really hard, I was able to get the boots zipped and un-zipped, but when I put them on this morning, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d really need to take them to get repaired. I thought, though, that I’d at least be able to get them off my feet before I took them to the shop.
I returned from my lessons, stepped inside my room, and sat down to take off my boots. I got the right boot off without any issues, but when I tried to unzip the left boot, the zipper got stuck less than half-way down. I tried to pull the boot off without unzipping it the rest of the way, but unfortunately the boots fit too tightly to slide off without being unzipped first.
When I’d walked down the hall to my room, I saw that the kitchen door was open and I’d heard one of the dorm staff in there. I decided I’d walk down the hall to see if Halyna Ivanivna could help me pull my boots off–figuring if I could just get someone else to pull on the zipper, I might be able to free myself so I could then take the offending boot to the cobbler. I showed Halyna Ivanivna my boot and asked her to help. She tried to pull on the zipper but quickly realized that we weren’t going to make any progress–the little teeth were simply stretched too far apart and that zipper wasn’t going to move.
She told me I needed something and told me to follow her to see someone where he would do something to my boots. Halyna Ivanivna speaks mostly Russian, although I probably still wouldn’t have understood her if she’d spoken in Ukrainian…my shoe and zipper vocabulary simply isn’t that well developed. So I followed her down the hall, clad in dress clothes, one slippered-foot, and one foot in a half-way zipped boot. She walked through the labyrinth-like halls to the handy-man’s room where she told him that she had a client for him. She explained that the same thing had happened to her boots, and that he had fixed them for her. They plopped me down on a stool and the handy-man, Oleh, started tugging at my zipper. Soon enough, we had an audience–one of the other dormitory staff wandered down the hall to see what the commotion was about and then sat down to watch the show and offer his running commentary.
Oleh had a bit of trouble getting the zipper down. This was probably due mostly to the fact that it was really stuck there, but it also might have had something to do with the huge white bandage covering his right thumb. After tugging and pulling for a few minutes with no luck, he sat down on a stool next to me and, a bit too eagerly, pulled my left leg onto his lap and then the other, laughing and patting my thigh. He continued to jiggle the zipper for a few minutes until finally he was able to wrench it loose from the snaggled teeth. I cheered and began to pull my legs off his lap, only for Oleh to exclaim, ” No, no! We’re not done yet!”
He reached for a tiny screwdriver and began to finesse the tiny teeth back into place. Meanwhile, several other dormitory staff had wandered by the open door only to pause and laugh at the sight of me leaning precariously backwards on a stool with both my legs stretched across Oleh’s lap. After pushing the teeth of the zipper back into place, Oleh grabbed an ordinary candle and rubbed it across the teeth of the zipper, coating them with wax. Then he yelled for Halyna Ivanivna to bring some matches, which he then lit and ran across the zipper.
According to Halyna Ivanivna, the salt and dirt from the roads and paths clog the zipper and cause it to get stuck. Oleh told me to run a candle over the zipper every couple of days in order to keep the zipper running easily over the teeth and with a final pat on the thigh, I was released, zipper slightly waxy, but almost as good as new. And with that, I hobbled back to my room, feeling a bit like a peg-legged pirate–slippered foot shuffling and boot-clad foot clicking all the way down the hall.
Side note: I’ll be updating soon about my parents’ visit to Ukraine. Certainly more monumental and interesting than getting stuck in my boots!
