Maybe I loafed too much. Or maybe I was just plain pernickety. But I really couldn’t stop those thought bubbles from turning up each time I heard Cinderella’s story. Several things befuddled me.

To start with, I wondered how awfully awkward it would be to put something on one’s feet that was made of glass slippers. Well, of course, the slipper mentioned here is not the flip-flop variety that we’re familiar with, but is actually a slip-on shoe for dancing. But doesn’t the whole idea seem a bit preposterous? How could Cinderella dance in glass slippers or glass slip-on shoes? Wouldn’t they shatter? If I were Cinderella, I’d surely fumble all over the place. And being the perfect klutz that I am, I’d smash the slippers to smithereens and thereby ruin the chance of meeting my Prince Charming. The End.

My fussing was temporarily laid to rest however, when I chanced upon an old French version of the story which described Cinderella’s footwear with the words pantoufle en vair, which means “fur slipper.” To be perfectly truthful, my French is rudimentary at best but I found out that some researchers think that a translator must have read the phrase as pantoufle en verre, which means “glass slipper.”

What do you know? After all these years, Cinderella’s “glass slipper” might be nothing more than a simple mistranslation. Regrettably, my beef didn’t stop there. I still thought the whole idea was preposterous. A frou-frou slipper? That’s even worse. I’m allergic to fur. Faux fur included. If I were Cinderella, I’d get a bad case of asthma-attack and consequently wreck my fate of a happily-ever-after. The End!

Don’t hate me for my romantic-fairy-tale iconoclastic leanings. As I am an unorthodox girl with non-traditional-romance-struck ideas of love, my own love story can never pass for the saccharine category.