Over coffee, an op-ed writer quizzed his newspaper’s sports reporter.

“It would have been a great Cinderella story if only that promising filly you told me about could have won her maiden race. She started as an odds-on favorite, yet she finished last. What went wrong?”

“She threw a shoe.”

John H. Dromey has a 100-word story “Twelve O’Clock Hijinks” online in the Spring/Summer (Issue No. 19) of Quantum Fairy Tales.

Editor: Now I’m just wondering whether there could be any worse invention than a set of glass horseshoes.