Project 365 Day 77

A Shoe In

I love old things. They feel like history to me. You know when you’re a kid and people would ask you what your favorite subject was in school and the answer was always recess and gym? I would say Reading and History. I hated gym. Jim should only be a man’s name, not a subject. And I think a part of my love of old things was the fact that I spent a great deal of my time growing up in England, where there were alot of really old things and I thought they were really cool. I have some really old shoes. I tell my kids I still have shoes from the 1900’s, and I do. The first “shoes” I remember were flip-flops when I lived in Texas (I was in 1st grade). I remember them mostly because I would be running along and pick up a goat-head on my foot and the ensuing pain involved. If you don’t know what a goat-head is, it’s a loose thorn that, when it lands on the ground has “sharp” on all sides. And I remember a pair of brown Hush Puppies I had when I was 10. I remember them because, although not a fashionista at that age, I knew it was not right to wear dark brown Hush Puppies with a buttery yellow dotted Swiss dress. If I hadn’t known it then (and I DID, Mom!), I definitely know it now. And I loved shoes in the 70’s. I had a pair of 6” platforms that were TO DIE FOR! sigh....I miss those shoes. But shoes really are not my friends. My feet are very hard to fit, so when I find shoes I like, I wear them until they fall apart, or my feet start to suffer. Which is why I told my dear husband this last Saturday we were going shopping for me some new shoes. We’ve been married for 31 years. He knows what it is like to shop for shoes with me and was not excited, to say the least. I did manage, however, to find this lovely pair of Nike Livestrong running shoes. Humorous, considering I still don’t run. But my feet slid into these like they were old friends. You know, I was just thinking....I know people who work at Nike. I wonder if they would like to hear my ideas for some really great, orthopedic-style athletic platform shoes. We could just do it, and maybe make a little shoe fashion history. After all, waffle irons worked!