Here’s this week’s column from the Brooklyn Papers. Check out the big Smartmom (It’s red, white, and blue) on the top, right-hand side of OTBKB. That’ll get you to an archive of my column at the Brooklyn Papers.

Smartmom bought her first pair of Jimmy Choo’s on Saturday afternoon in Baltimore. She doesn’t know what got into her. She doesn’t even remember exactly how it happened. It’s all sort of a blur.

She found the teal patent-leather sandals, reduced from $600 to $150, in a fancy mall near the Radisson Hotel where she and her extended family were staying for her rich cousin’s eldest daughter’s wedding.

Alone and dangerous, she was in a strange mood when she tried on those three-inch stiletto heels. She felt like Cinderella after her fairy godmother turned her rags into something a bit more suitable for a ball.

Smartmom knew those Jimmy Choo’s would look great with the black dress she bought. They might even make the outfit. And she knew that she would fit right in with that wealthy Baltimore crowd accustomed to spending $600 on sandals.

What was Smartmom doing? She had packed a brand new pair of budget gold dress shoes from Aerosoles on Seventh Avenue. And she’d already spent a month’s earnings for gas, food, lodging, the gift, tux rentals and new dresses for this wedding. But before she could stop herself, her MasterCard was on the counter and her Jimmy Choo’s were being bagged.

Blame it on Baltimore, where Smartmom was exposed to a level of opulence and wealth completely out of proportion to the way she and her family live in their apartment on Third Street.

In one of the homes they visited, there was a closet the size of Smartmom’s living room, dining room and kitchen combined. Hepcat said it was the first closet he’d ever been in with an island. That house made Jennifer Connolly’s limestone mansion on Prospect Park West look like a tool shed.

Back in her hotel room, Smartmom slipped on her Jimmy Choo’s and kvelled over the sexy way they made her feet look. But she also found herself feeling anxious, even skittish, about what she’d just done.

What would she tell Hepcat when he saw how much she had spent on those shoes? After all, they were just getting back on their feet after three years of self-employment (or was it unemployment?).

And who was she kidding? Owning a pair of Jimmy Choo’s wouldn’t make Smartmom a part of this upscale crowd any more than a Brooklyn Industries hoodie would make these Baltimoreans fit into Park Slope. They’d look pretty out of place loading organic lacinato kale at the Food Coop.

At the garden wedding the next day, a string quartet played The Pachelbel Canon, as the bridesmaids walked, with difficulty in the grass, in gold stilettos.

With endless champagne and delicious sushi and caviar, the reception was decidedly “Sex & the City,” with twentysomethings, in gorgeous dresses and, you guessed it, Jimmy Choo’s. (Youth ain’t wasted on these pretty young things.)

It was a breathtaking affair. The voluptuous white rose arrangements at every table cost more than what Smartmom spent on her high-heel sandals.

Despite the cash register sound in her ears most of the day, Smartmom felt that joy she always feels at weddings as she watched the radiant bride, in her Vera Wang strapless gown, dancing like Isadora Duncan and felt an openhearted wish for the couple’s happiness.

She knew that no amount of money could protect them from the sometimes rocky first years of marriage. While an abundant checking account might limit those late-night money worries, it wouldn’t make the marriage any more loving or stable.

Five of the 10 people seated at Smartmom’s table were divorced. Some had remarried, some had not. When the conversation turned to divorce statistics, Smartmom’s aunt said smiling, “They shouldn’t let divorced people into weddings.”

Smartmom wore her Jimmy Choo’s all night. She didn’t even take them off when she danced an ecstatic hora and helped to lift the bride, a lawyer, and the groom, a young doctor, up in chairs. She even wore them when the lead singer, a Tina Turner sound-alike, invited all the women onto the stage to dance to “Proud Mary.”

At 11 pm, Teen Spirit, looking mighty dapper in his Men’s Warehouse special, started canvassing for a return to the hotel. “It was fun if you like 1980s funk music,” he said dismissively. The Oh So Feisty One, who danced the night away, was exhausted. And Hepcat, who spent most of the evening photographing the festivities, was also ready to vamoose.

In the room, Smartmom finally took off those sandals and noticed some grass, mud and a tiny nick on the stiletto heel. Somehow that seemed appropriate. Jimmy Choo’s are not an amulet against the reality that life dishes out, even if they do offer a momentary respite from it all. She washed the dirt off the expensive patent-leather and put them back in the box.

Sleepily, Smartmom surveyed their hotel room: Teen Spirit’s tux was in a heap on the carpet; OSFO was already asleep in her pretty pink dress; and Hepcat, after tee many martoonis, was a little loopier than usual.

But Smartmom realized she had everything she wanted. And it doesn’t come in teal patent leather.