Magical Shoes

OK, so I read a lot of blogs and was reading Niffer's magical shoe post(Sing Sing). I work in the fashion industry and do have a lot of great shoes. For a guy, I have more than most. I think my need for shoes in my older life stems from a shoe incident In my younger life.

When I was in grade school, the gym was lightly waxed industrial tile surrounded by cinder block walls. It was a magical place, an escape from our otherwise uniformed and dress 'shoed' lives. I was never the team captain, but usually one of the first kids picked for the team. I had outgrown my Chuck's(Converse sneakers), that my mother had gotten on sale. New sneakers were almost never in the budget, so my mom took me to K Mart. After a long search, I found a really cool looking pair of silver sneakers. They seemed to fit, but the whole shoe was made of plastic, even the soles. These things were so cheap, you couldn't have payed less, even at Payless. The shoe laces would have been plastic if they could have found a way.

It's now my first gym class with the new K Mart brand sneakers. I'm doing the strut, coming out in shiny silver shoes, the future of sports. That is until I find out we are doing relays. I loved relays, but wasn't sure how the new shoes would handle. So now it's my turn to run to the far line and back. The line is about seven feet from the far wall. I slip, as I take off, but quickly recover and am on my way.

Let me take pause and explain to you, I was a big kid. What that means for the physics of this story is that I gathered a lot of momentum during the run.

It's now time for me to do the turn around and I am flying. I dip my foot over the line and go to dig in. I learned a quick piece of math, plastic souls + waxed vinyl = -(traction). As I slid ever faster towards the impending crash, my hands instinctively went up and I braced for impact. I didn't so much hit the wall as splattered against it. My arm, shoulder and knee were beyond sore. After a trip to the nurses office and missing the rest of gym class I decided I would rather cram my feet into my old sneakers than die in the new ones. The rest of the year I had sore feet until summer, when it was "new sneaker time".

I still prefer to wear my shoes loose(if at all) except for when hiking. I actually tried to find a pair of plastic soled sneakers to show my kids, but I guess for safety reasons, they do not make them anymore. Now I own a lot of great shoes and my kids get nothing but "Sing Sing" shoes.