shoes

They say you can tell a lot about a man by looking at his shoes. It's a silly metaphor but one that's always stuck with me. When I meet someone, I look at their shoes. It's my way of sizing them up. And sometimes I wonder if they do the same to me.

The thing is, the metaphor works so well. As a child you're constantly growing new shoes. You're probably wearing shoes your parents picked for you or some hand-me-downs. When growth slows down you start making your own choices. Boots through most of high school, then black Converse junior year. My sister drew stars on one of them. When they got old I wrapped duct tape around them. It was an ultimate, deliberate expression of how little I cared--something I wanted to make sure everyone knew.

Then there was the grey pair I had for a while. They were unadorned until I let my girlfriend draw all over one of them, and someone dropped a red marker on the other--after which point they bore her mark forever, until they were far too tattered to be worn. Even then I kept them around sometimes, for those days I didn't have time to put on another pair, the days when I was at my worst, the days when I was least prepared.

I've had both pairs I wear now for a long time now. Both of them are getting noticeably beat up. The green and black pair is stained; the black pair is turning brownish. Both are falling apart on the inside, little pieces I didn't even know were there falling apart of ripping. But for all appearances they're fine. They don't draw attention to themselves, but they aren't beautiful. They get by. They may be unravelling but there's still a few miles left in them.