Melissa brought her fun and friendly personality with her to her new job, as well as her wardrobe. Her new station, Channel 2, was indeed a much larger market - a Top 30 market - they had similar dress code freedom to what she was accustomed to at Channel 4. This meant that Melissa was free to wear her comfortable and easy to slip off mules any time she wanted. Indeed, the primary time her legs were even seen on TV was during her face-to-face interview segments on the Noon Newscast.
Melissa's shoe play was only seen by the television viewers during her one-on-one interviews - and those only being during camera shots with both her and the interviewee in the shot at the same time. However, around Channel 2, after only a few weeks, Melissa was becoming known for being quick to remove her shoes. A couple of her female colleagues dismissed her as being from a rural part of the country. Her male colleagues however were more prone to think she was cute, perky and/or sexy. In the first three weeks, Melissa was frequently seen running around the station in nyloned feet, having abandoned her shoes under her desk, or under someone else’s desk, or in the conference room. On a couple of occasions, she had to look in 2 or 3 places before remembering where she left her shoes behind.
Weekday mornings, Melissa was the main anchor for the newscast that ran from 5:30AM to 7:00AM. There were also four 5-minute newsbreaks at 25 and 55 minutes after each of the next two hours while the national morning show took their local newsbreaks. Working with her were Meteorologist, Dave Storm, and sportscaster, Kip Bright. Both men normally stayed in the studio during the last 15 minutes of each half-hour, during the time of their segments.
Both guys were only a few years older than Melissa and also single. They thought she was cute and pretty and almost immediately, they noticed her frequent shoe play and shoe abandonment. In fact they discussed it among themselves. Dave loved the way her feet looked in nylons and Kip liked the way her polished toenails could be seen through her nylons on occasion. He also though her ditziness misplacing her shoes on occasion was sort of cute as well. During each newscast, Dave sat to Melissa's left and Kip sat to her right in the television studio. It was a large, modern studio with a pretty set design. The set had recently been redesigned not long before Melissa arrived at Channel 2. The on-camera personalities sat behind an elevated mahogany-looking desk facade which rose 2 feet off the concrete studio floor. Each sat in a comfortable wheel-around stool-like chair with cushioned arms and a footrest. The set design gave the two guys frequent opportunities to watch Melissa play with her mules - a shoe style she wore practically every day.
During the newscasts, Melissa often rested one foot on the footrest and crossed her other leg at the knee and dangled one shoe. She usually switched which leg was crossed a few times each newscast, sometimes losing the dangling shoe onto the elevated platform. She's usually wait until the next commercial break to slip down and recover the shoe and repeat the process all over again.
One morning, Melissa was wearing her favorite pair of dark blue mules, when one shoe dangled off and forward far enough to clear the front edge of the elevated platform and land under the desk amongst the wires that led to the teleprompter and the sound equipment. She had to kneel down to recover her shoe that time. Afterwards, Kip and Dave talked about a possible prank to 'break in the new kid.'
"Hey, we could wait until her shoe falls off then knock it far back under the desk to where she'd have to ask for help from one of us to recover it," Dave suggested.
Bip replied, "Yeah, that sounds good, but how do you plan to do that without her knowing what's going on?"
"Maybe I can bring in a lightning rod one morning as a prop and talk about lightning safety. I could roll back and push her shoe forward with that. It is April, which is severe weather time, you know."
"I don't know, maybe. April's also the Master's golf tournament. I could bring in one of my golf clubs as a prop."
"Maybe. Why don't we both bring props on the same day and whoever has the best opportunity to pull it off can proceed."
"Sounds like a plan. We'll try to do it in the last half-hour of the show next Monday?"
Later in the day, after doing the noon news, Melissa was about ready to go home when Tamara King, the main weekday evening co-anchor and community legend called her at her desk. "Melissa, hi, can you do me a huge favor?"
"What's that?"
"My son's school just called and he's sick and I need to pick him up. I was supposed to go over to JFK Middle School and speak to one of their English classes about TV News. The teacher you need to meet is Marlene Gray. All you have to do is tell a little about yourself and answer any questions they might have. You only have to speak for 45 minutes during their 5th period, which starts at 1PM."
"I think I can do that. No problem."
With no time to go home and change, Melissa wore the same outfit she had worn to work to go speak to the school. Tamara failed to tell Melissa about something that had happened only a few months prior to her arrival in town. Parents and students fought the City School Board to have a ban on backless shoes removed from all middle school dress codes, but claiming safety as the main concern, such a ban was kept, leaving students to have to wait until 9th grade to wear the most fashionable shoe style of the day.
Melissa hurried out from the station after her newscast ended at 12:30 and jumped in her car and hurried across town to JFK Middle School. She arrived mere minutes until she was due to speak and hurried down the sidewalk, slapping in her mules, into the building. She encountered students changing classes and a few seemed to recognize her. Others heard the noise of her mules slapping and looked to see what was the source of the clicking and slapping noise on the tile floors. After stopping by the school's main office, a student helper escorted Melissa upstairs to room 215 where Marlene Gray was anxiously waiting.
"Hello, are you Marlene Gray? I'm Melissa from Channel 2 and I am filling in for Tamara. She was called away on a family emergency and asked me to speak."
"Nice to meet you. You're that new girl on the morning news. I'm glad you're going to be speaking to us today. You can sit on my stool and talk to the students. When you're done. I'm sure they have lots of questions."
Melissa approached the stool in the quiet classroom slapping her mules against her feet with each step. This caught the attention of everyone and especially the teacher. Marlene was disturbed that Melissa had chosen to wear the very shoes that the students had fought to wear and lost. She was in favor of the ban and in fact was the ban's major instigator. She did not appreciate her coming into her school and giving the students any more reason to protest.
Melissa did an excellent job speaking to the students and fielding their questions. Totally unaware of herself, she sat on the stool with one leg crossed and dangling one shoe in various ways throughout. A couple of times, she dangled a shoe completely off causing an embarrassing clank on the tile floor. Once her talk was over, she thanked Marlene who in turn thanked her and concealed her ill feelings toward her choice of footwear.
On the way out, Melissa approached the stairs and began to descend. On the second step from the bottom, one of her mules came part of the way off, causing her to misstep and begin to fall forward. In doing so, her shoe came completely off and landed on the ground floor and bounced with a loud noise in front of the school's principal, Mr. Mark Lawson. She happened to fall into his arms, a lucky break that probably helped her avoid injury. Mr. Lawson tried to make the embarrassed-looking, attractive, young lady, whose hair and perfume smelled very nice when he caught her, feel better, "This is why the school board banned backless shoes from the middle schools. I see you're a visitor, can I help you?" He said this with a smile on his face and with a light chuckle.
Melissa replaced her shoe on her foot and straightened her clothing and introduced herself while handing her a business card, "Actually, I just spoke to Mrs. Gray's English class. I'm the morning and midday anchor for Channel 2. I just moved here back in late March."
"So, you're new around here. It's interesting how your mishap illustrated a point."
'Yeah, you said that the school board banned backless shoes from the middle schools, what's up with that? What are the girl's going to wear? Practically all the cute styles today are backless. I wear them all the time.
Mr. Lawson and Melissa began to walk toward the main office. "That's what the crowd of angry students and parents told the school board back in February. They are actually valid points, however in our system, most of our middle schools are older buildings. There is a tendency around here to build new high schools and convert the old one to a middle school. Most of the schools have stairs, like this one and our insurance company were afraid of having to pay for mishaps caused by students falling on the stairs wearing backless shoes."
"That's an interesting story, Mr. Lawson."
"Please, Melissa, call me Mark."
"Okay, Mark. I've heard of schools banning backless shoes and I always thought they were just a bunch of prudes, but I am comforted to know that there is actually a valid argument to support it. I am curious, though. How many stair accidents involved non-backless shoes?"
"No one knows, really."
"That's odd. I figured that if you knew about accidents 'with' backless shoes' then you know the stats 'without.'" By now, Mark, who was divorced and pushing 40, was taking note of how nice and attractive Channel 2's new morning anchor was.
Actually there are no stats. One of our teachers heard about the amount of accidents in the schools, including a few in ours, and saw a lot of the girls wearing backless shoes and just made an assumption and tipped off the insurance company who in turn pushed the school board to keep ban them. When the students and parents protested, this same teacher was the main one who pushed to keep the ban.
Melissa did not want to monopolize the Principal's time but she felt that she had found a story to dig into a little deeper so he thanked him again for saving her from getting hurt then gave him her business card. Mark in turn told Melissa, "Don't hesitate to call me if you need anything."
"I appreciate that very much. I am interested in digging a little deeper into the backless shoe story." Melissa replied and she turned to leave.
Mark watched this pretty TV anchor walk away. He thought she was dressed so smartly and she looked so flirty in her slappy little mules. Taking a chance, he called back to her, "Melissa."
A surprised Melissa stopped and turned back toward the principal.
"Sometimes I have these meetings across town with the other middle school principals on your side of town. Do you get a break between your morning and noon newscasts? If so, maybe I could stop by on the way to one of these meetings and take you to get a cup of coffee and talk.?"
Melissa was still in 'work mode' and she took this as a generous gesture to help her on her story so she readily accepted, "Sure, Mark, sounds great. I am free between a little after 9:00 AM until 10 or 10:30."
After leaving the school, she left to go to the mall to shop and relax. While in one of the mall's major department stores, Melissa bought a couple of new on-camera outfits and a new pair of black mules. She loved the stitching on the upper. While she was walking around the mall, she thought further about the principal's offer. Could this have possibly been more that just a chance to talk. Was it possible that he was asking her out on a date. She thought that Mark was handsome and friendly, but she was not sure how to take his proposition.
Next Monday, Melissa wore one of her new outfits she had purchased at the mall the previous week. She also wore her new black mules. She felt like the whole outfit looked good on her and on television. As usual, she dangled and played with her shoes throughout the morning newscast. Since each 30-minute segment was considered a separate newscast, Dave talked about lightning safety, using the lightning rod, and Kip talked about the Masters Golf tournament, using the golf club each half-hour.
At 6:40AM, Kip and Dave took their familiar positions to do their last weather and sportscasts of the show. They noticed that Melissa was fervently playing with her shoes. As expected, her right shoe slipped off and fell in Dave's direction. Since she was still reading news copy, there was nothing she could do but wait until the commercial break. Dave was able to subtly reach down with his lightning rod and knock her fallen shoe forward without anybody knowing it - except Kip. Unfortunately, it did not clear the edge of the podium, but instead landed off to Melissa's right in reach of Kip's golf club. Kip realized it would be up to him to complete the deed. He, also subtly, reached across and hooked her shoe with the head of his club and tried to sling it forward off the podium. Instead, the shoe stayed hooked to his club when he pulled it back out. Feigning having forgotten something, Kip was able to sneak the shoe out of the studio and place it in his vertical filing cabinet for safekeeping.
Dave and Kip went to the men's room while Melissa proceeded to wrap up the morning newscast. "So Kip, did you knock her shoe forward under the desk. My attempt left it on the edge of the podium on your side?"
"Not exactly. When I tried to push the shoe off it stayed on the club. I had to work fast so I took her shoe and ran it over to my office in my filing cabinet."
"Why'd you do that? I thought our game was to make her ask one of us to help her find her shoe under the table."
"How about a new game. See her parade around the station in her nylons this morning, and then when she's about to panic that she'll have to do the noon news and the interview without her shoes, I'll just happen to 'find' her shoe and return it to her.
"Okay, I guess that'll be okay. I guess you'll leave until around 11AM, won't you? I'll go back to the studio and I'll probably find Melissa looking for her shoe and help her and pretend I don't know it's not there."
"Yeah, sounds great. Take good notes for me."
Kip left the station and Dave wandered back to the studio where he found Melissa under the table on her hands and knees. Her left foot still had on one black mule but the other one was bare except for sheer nylons. "Something wrong?"
"Yes! My shoe came off and it fell somewhere under this large desk. It's so dark I can't see and they’re wires everywhere! Can you help me find a flashlight?"
"Sure, I'll be back in a minute." Dave went to the janitorial closet and retrieved a large-sized flashlight and knelt down next to Melissa and began to shine it all around.
"I don't see it anywhere. I can't believe it just disappeared under there. I was doing the news and my shoe came off and I just assumed it fell over the edge of the platform. What time is it?
Dave shined the flashlight on his watch and replied, "7:10."
"Oh, no, I have to get ready for our first 25-minute-after news summary, I also need to do some research for my midday newscast. Thanks for your help. I'll have to wait until my 9 o’clock break to look some more." Melissa ripped off her remaining shoe and deposited it under her desk for safekeeping for now until her other shoe could be located.
Dave felt caught in the middle to some extent. He knew where Melissa's other shoe was and was in a position to end her fruitless searching - his original intention was only to delay not cause a total loss. On the other hand, seeing Melissa move around the station in her cute little nyloned feet had it's appeal.
Melissa and Dave finished their four cut-in news segments a little before 9 O'clock and in between each one, Melissa knelt down with the flashlight and looked a little with obviously no success. As time went by she began to suspect that Dave and Kip might be pulling a prank on her. She had had one of both shoes stolen from under her desk on several occasions back in school. This gave her the experience to know that the less you protest the more likely you are for the perpetrator to give up and return your shoe or shoes without a fuss. So, at the end of her newscast, she calmly went back to her desk to check her email and return any phone calls that may have come in. Dave went back to the weather lab to watch some thunderstorms that were beginning to show up on the Doppler radar.
Suddenly, Melissa's phone began to ring. She answered it in her usual professional manner. By the background noise she could tell this was a call from a cell phone in a moving vehicle. "Hello, Melissa, this is Mark Lawson, Principal over at JFK Middle."
"Yes, Mark, I remember meeting you last week."
"Well, I happen to have a lunch meeting with the principal of Westdale Middle School out your way later on and I was wondering if you'd like to take a coffee break with me at the Starbuck's near the station."
Melissa thought, 'Of all days for Mark to call. Here I am missing a shoe. What an impression will that make. But I hate to turn him down for that reason. Maybe I can get Dave to confess it's a prank and get my shoe back.' She told Mark, "Sure, that sounds good. What time are we looking at?"
"I think I can be there in 5 or 10 minutes."
A lump rose in Melissa's throat, 'Okay, just come by the front desk and they will point you in my direction."
"Okay, I'll see you soon."
After hanging up, Melissa charged down to Dave's weather lab in a panic, taking a chance that her hunch was right. "Dave! If this is a prank, I need my shoe back! The Principal of JFK Middle School is coming to pick me up for an interview in less than 10 minutes."
"Okay, it is a prank."
"Dave!"
"But I only intended to knock your shoe under the desk and make you look a little. Kip originally intended the same thing, but things went wrong and he had to leave the studio with your shoe."
"Please don't tell me he took my shoe with him!"
"No, it's in his filing cabinet. We'll go by and get it now." Dave and Melissa hurried over to Kip's office and approached the 4-drawer vertical filing cabinet.
Dave pulled on the handle, "Uh oh, it's locked!"
"What! How could he do this! Maybe it's just jammed." Melissa tugged at all 4 handles and it was most definitely locked. "Who has the backup key?"
"I have no idea, but it would probably take a lot longer than you have to wait."
Melissa glanced at her watch and saw she had only a couple of minutes before Mark would be stopping by to pick her up. She slipped her only shoe back on under her desk and began to prepare for his arrival and what she'd say to him. She decided also to tuck her unshod foot under her left thigh to hide her predicament a little longer. Mark arrived at her cubicle.
"Hello Mark, I'm so glad you stopped by."
"Hi Melissa, it's good to see you too. Are you ready to go?"
"I suppose, but there's something pretty embarrassing I have to tell you. The weatherman and the sports guy are pulling a prank on me and they hid one of my shoes." After finishing her sentence, she untucked her foot to show that she only had one shoe in her possession.
"Are they here? If they knew you had company they'd probably give it back."
"Actually the weatherman was going to do just that, but the place where the sports guy hid my shoe is locked and he's going to be gone until 11AM."
"Okay, well it's certainly not your fault and I don't have a problem seeing you in one shoe. Maybe we can go and I'll go inside to get the coffee and you can save us a seat outside at one of the tables.
"Alright, let's try to get away from here with as few people as possible seeing me like this." Melissa, wearing her one shoe, and Mark slipped out a side door and Mark drove around with his car to pick her up - not making her walk on unprotected foot any more than necessary. Once inside his car, Melissa crossed her feet at the ankle and tried to relax. They exchanged a bit of getting-acquainted small talk on the short ride to Starbuck's.
Mark dropped Melissa off at the entrance to the outdoor patio, "See if you can get us a good table." Melissa got out and walked lopsided to the nearest available table, tucked her bare foot underneath her other thigh and waited for Mark to park, go inside and bring their coffee.
"So how long have you done local news?"
I've been out of school about a year; this is my second job. My last station was in a smaller market and I did weekend mornings and spot reporting."
"That's a good jump in responsibility. You're the number two anchor at the station now."
"Yeah, but Tamara's a legend in this town. What about you? How long have you been a school principal and did you teach before that?"
I've been at JFK Middle for 8 years. Before that I taught American History in Chicago."
"So Mark, tell me more about this backless shoe ban. What do you think was the real issue."
"I really can't say to much. One of our teachers was the main instigator. She thought those kind of shoes should be banned as I said before and the school board agreed."
"What about the teachers? Can they wear backless shoes?"
"No, that was one of the concessions the staff made. We decided that if the kids can't wear them the staff couldn't either."
"May I interview the teacher who initiated the ban? You said "she" so I assume it was a female teacher." Melissa untucked her bare foot and crossed it behind her other ankle under the chair.
"I'll ask her and if she says okay, I'll call you and let you know. Enough talking shop, what do you like to do for fun?"
Melissa originally thought this was primarily an interview, but Mark was a handsome older gentleman. She not exactly wanted to blow him off just yet, but she was also unsure about what to do really. She decided to just go with the flow and answer his question, "I like going shopping, touring gardens and old homes, eating at nice restaurants, stuff like that." She began to relax and untucked her bare foot and crossed it over her other leg at the knee, placing her foot in Mark's plain view.
Mark went in for the kill, "So would you like to go out for dinner Saturday night. I know this great little Italian Bistro on the north side of town. They have killer lasagna and a jazz band with dancing."
Melissa decided to take a chance, ”Okay, I'll go. it sounds fun." Melissa gave Mark her phone number and address so he could pick her up. Time came to go back to work, so Mark got the car and picked Melissa up where he dropped her off and took her back to the station.
"Mark, thanks for coffee. I'll see you Saturday."
"The pleasure was all mine. See you soon." Mark paused to watch Melissa walk one-shod back into the station through the same side entrance. She looked like a damsel in distress, so cute, pretty and innocent.
Melissa returned to her desk to work and slipped her one shoe off underneath. Around 11AM, Kip walked by and Melissa jumped up and followed him to his office. "Where's my shoe?"
"Where are both shoes? You're not wearing either."
"Enough games; Dave told me. The Principal of JFK Middle school came to take me to coffee for an interview and I had to go wearing one shoe."
"I'm so sorry. If we had known, we wouldn't have pulled the prank today. But I don't know why Dave didn't just pull it out of here." Kip opened a different drawer on his desk that was also like a filing cabinet and it was unlocked the whole time.
"You mean my shoe was here the whole time? Wait until I tell Dave." Melissa grabbed her shoe, marched back to her desk and returned to work.
