Shoes

I'm not like a lot of girls, in that I don't really get all excited about shoes. I have my basic pairs of brown shoes, black shoes, tennis shoes, and flip-flops. Even my flip-flops are boring. I really only ask one thing of my shoes: comfort. Which is why I wear my tennis shoes nearly every day.

That being said, I confess that there are actually a few pairs of shoes that I have had in my lifetime that have stood out to me. They seem to have strong memories attached to them. Maybe it's because they went beyond my basic shoe wardrobe.

When I was probably six years old, I had a pair of shiny red vinyl boots. I can't imagine that my mother actually bought these for me, so I have no idea where they came from. I just remember liking them. I'm pretty sure I could never pull off wearing them now, but my six-year-old self probably had no problem with it.

I remember the absolute loudest pair of shoes I've ever owned. They were appropriately dubbed my "clip-clop shoes." The soles were made out of wood, and they had only one band that went across the top of my foot to hold them on, which didn't work very well. I have vivid memories of clip-clopping my way from my first grade classroom down the white tiled hallway to the restroom and back, feeling teachers' eyes on my shoes with every echoing step.

My favorite pair of tennis shoes--ever--were my purple Kangaroo tennis shoes. Do you remember Kangaroos? There are exactly three reasons why these were my favorite tennis shoes of all time:
1. They had a little zippered pocket on one side of each shoe, and I carried my boyfriend's second grade picture in one pocket and his third grade picture in the other.
2. They came from my father's sporting goods store (Bevell Sports Inc., which was in existence for all of about one year), so they felt special.
3. Did I mention they were purple?

My first pair of high heels. I am confident that the only reasons my mother ever let me get these shoes were because I begged and because they were free. My father was in seminary at the time, and there was a huge garage sale, of sorts, for seminary students and their families. My greatest find: these deep purple (Okay, so I had a thing for purple.) high-heeled shoes that perfectly fit my ten-year-old feet. I can barely walk in heels as an adult, so I can only imagine how much trouble I had walking in these things as a pre-teen. I think I only wore them a few times, one of which was the time I wore them to church. A woman who was well-known for her flair for wearing really loud and vibrant (artistic?!) clothing came up to me and declared the wonderfulness of my shoes. As much as I loved them, too, I decided not to wear them anymore after that.

My cleats. I played softball throughout elementary school, junior high, and high school. I was very proud of the fact that I was on the Varsity softball team as an eighth grader. (We didn't have a junior high team. Shhhhh . . . ) I wasn't the greatest player, but I was decent. And wearing cleats made me feel even more legitimate. I managed to hit a few homeruns during my career. I also received a broken jaw from getting whacked in the side of the face with the ball while stealing third. Also very legitimate.

One of the loveliest parts of having a blog is that I get to write about whatever in the world I feel like writing about, even if it's old shoes.