Shoes and the Wooden Table

It’s an old story. Many parts of it have probably been changed over the years. As people told the story to other people, they may have changed certain parts of it. Those who believed the story and passed it on may have added many exaggerated details, while those who didn’t believe it may have retold it in the simplest form possible. And so, over the years, the story’s main outline remained unchanged, while its details changed considerably.

I heard this story from my mother. She likes to embellish old stories and add her own interpretations to them. I will tell you the simplified version of this story, without adding any of my own interpretations. For this, I asked my mother to tell me the story a second time and recorded her voice.

A family of four is having dinner: a father, a son, a mother, and a grandmother.Because one of the table’s legs was shorter than the others, the table wouldn’t sit firmly on the floor, so they would constantly put a piece of paper under one of its legs.

At this point, regretting what I’d done, I asked my mother why they hadn’t simply bought a new table. I was expecting an answer like, “Because they were a poor family.”

‘’Do you always have to say the first thing that comes to mind, son? That’s what’s wrong with your generation—you look for logic in everything. Do you think they’re idiots? You think it never occurred to them to buy a new table, and they’d rather keep messing around with pieces of paper? There must have been a reason, and that’s not important. Not everything needs to be questioned or made to fit some kind of logic. Maybe they were being irrational. So what? Were they supposed to ask you for permission before being irrational?’’

I remained silent. It bothered me that the story had become a legend simply because of an irrational decision, when it could have ended before it even became a story.

My mother suddenly shouted, “Answer me!”

“What’s the question?”

“Do they need to ask for your permission before behaving irrationally?”

‘’No.’’

‘’Did it never occur to them to get a different table instead of putting pieces of paper under the leg, dear scientist?”

‘’It did.’’

Just as she was about to shout another full sentence, a fly tried to land on my mother’s face. She swatted it away with her hand, then scratched the spot where the fly had touched her.

“Cut this part out of the recording.”

I pressed the stop button on the voice recorder as loudly as I possibly could. Then I thought that was a mistake. To tell the story without adding any of my own interpretations, it would be better to listen to the complete version as it had been told. So I turned the voice recorder back on.

“This foolish family, which had never once thought of buying a new table, began eating their soup over a warm conversation. Suddenly, the piece of paper beneath one of the table legs slipped out, and an entire bowl of soup spilled into the father’s lap. Still piping hot because it had just been served in an iron bowl, the soup made the father jerk, sending the entire table crashing to the floor.’’

For some reason, my mother went on for a very long time here. When I listened to the recording, I realized that her description of what happened took up two full minutes. So I’ll keep this part brief and continue the story from where the floor had been cleaned and everyone had calmed down.

‘’The following evening, something similar happened during dinner. The piece of paper under the table leg slipped again, but this time the table didn’t collapse; the son caught it with a quick reflex. And the next day, the same thing happened again. The day after that, once more. The family, who had never thought of buying a new table, eventually decided that they needed to secure the table leg more firmly.’’

Perhaps she had added so many extra details to the story in an attempt to make its inconsistencies make sense in her own way and keep me from dismissing the way she told it. To prove that they had never managed to find a solution, she listed every solution that came to mind at the time: they leaned the table against the wall, put a piece of wood under it instead of paper, put a thick book underneath it, and so on. But every time, whatever they placed beneath the table leg would somehow slide out on its own, and the son, now focused entirely on the problem, would catch the table by reflex each time.

“Finally, the grandmother came up with the idea of putting a shoe on the table leg. She thought that, by its very nature, a shoe would be the best thing to keep the table steady. She went to the shoe rack, brought back a pair of shoes, slipped the table’s short leg into one of them, and tied the laces.”

There are more unnecessary details and exaggerations here. For example, my mother mentioned that the father made a joke along the lines of: “If we put another shoe on this table, it’ll look just like Uncle Jason. His posture is exactly like this table’s too. The guy’s built like a plank of wood.”

I didn’t find the joke funny at first. But a few days later, when it came to me just before I fell asleep, I found it quite funny.

“The leg with the shoe keeps the table steady. They eat their dinner happily. But the following evening, the table starts leaning in a different direction. They take a look and realize that another one of the table’s legs has somehow become shorter this time. They can’t make sense of it, but they don’t think too much about it either. After all, they’re an irrational family, too foolish to think of simply buying a new table. So they put a shoe on that leg too.”

As you might expect, the same thing happened to the table’s other legs. The grandmother put shoes on all of them. And that final evening, when the table stood perfectly sturdy, upright, and bravely (those are my mother’s words), they ate their dinner with great pleasure, without a single wobble.

The next morning, the son is the first to wake up and comes into the living room. He sees that the table is no longer there. And that is where the story ends. Everything that follows consists of interpretations. There is no information about how the family reacted to what happened, or what they did afterward. All the storytellers focus solely on the table’s behavior.

Of course, most people assumed that the table had run away and they focused on the reason why. Well, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. A few years ago, I found myself in a situation I never could have expected, and I behaved in ways I never would have expected from myself. Anything is possible in this world.