Unable to move, my heart racing, I could feel sweat beading up on my forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Transfixed, I stared at the boy across the street wearing those shoes; bright-blue and red sneakers. Basketball shoes really, and there was a pride in his step.
The sight of those shoes jolted me back to the fall of my twelfth year. I felt queasy and like I was about to break out in hives all over again. Scientists tell us that smell is the most powerful memory inducer we have as humans. Apparently, these scientists have never seen a pair of Nike Zoom Turbines.These shoes are cool. They have bright, deep navy-blue bottoms and bright, cardinal-red uppers with white laces and white soles. The shoe’s material spirals across and over the foot giving it the appearance of movement. They looked like they are about to jump over something impossibly tall. They didn’t sell these kicks at Mayfair’s.
The fact is, they didn’t sell them anywhere when I was twelve. But had you seen me standing there at Mayfair’s in my bright-blue and red sneakers, you would have thought I was the bomb. Well, not exactly, you see, this was thirty years ago. Bright-blue and red sneakers then didn’t say, “You is cool,” as much as they said,”You’re about to get your ass whooped.”
It was August and that meant summer was over and the school year was about to begin. Normally, the start of a new school year was nothing special, but this year, for some reason, we were going shopping for new school clothes. As the perennial recipient of my older brother’s hand-me-downs, I was unaccustomed to this ritual. Besides, our mother never took us shopping for clothes. If what we had still fit reasonably well, then we simply didn’t need anything. The problem, of course, was in the “reasonably well” part. Her litmus test was as long as your pants had more continuous fabric than holes and your legs were covered at least from the mid-shin up, then they fit reasonably well. Function and frugality were the major factors in their continued use; fashion played no part.
However, on this trip, pants were not the quarry. Shoes were. And this made a bit more sense to me, as my feet were not the same size as my brother’s. In fact, they were now larger than his and I could no longer wear his worn out shoes. This was the occasion when I was to get my first pair of new shoes. I would have be unable to contain myself if, at the time, I had understood what this could mean. But new shoes? I couldn’t even imagine it.
Off to Mayfair’s we went. Now you have to understand that Mayfair’s was a lot like what WalMarts are today, though not as large and they were devoted mostly to clothing and housewares. Mayfair’s were home to all manor of bargains. It was the kind of place that seldom saw any natural fibers, either in the merchandise or on its customers.
As we walked through the bin-lined rows and around the huge circular display stands, that resembled the corrugated metal troughs used to water livestock – huge livestock, loaded with clothes, some piled on the floor, I began to imagine the beautiful new shoes I would soon have on my feet. I pictured a new pair of loafers that would hold a shinny new penny in the front, or a perhaps a pair of sneakers. We called them tennis shoes, even though we knew they were not meant to be used to play tennis.
My mother was generally against sneakers. All sneakers. Her dislike of them was more about the fun you could have in them, than anything in particular about the shoes themselves. She believed in keeping your nose to the grindstone, and one simply could not do that in anything but Oxfords or similar “sturdy’ shoes. Sneakers were not be trusted.
It was towards the back of the store that my excitement began to be replaced with dread. The bin was large, to say the least. Much larger than any we had passed so far in the “Ladies” or “‘Lil Misses” departments we had traversed to get to the “Active Boys” Department. The bin was so large the walls were taller than I was. The only reason I could see what it contained was that the contents had spilled out over the edge of the walls and were splayed out on the floor.
My mother made a bee-line for the container. Her excitement was fueled by the over-sized sign hanging from the ceiling just above the impossibly large bin of shoes that read, in monestrous black letters, “Buy One Pair Get Another Pair Free - Any size.” As we reached the vat-o-shoes, she announced, “We both (that is, my brother and I) could each have our own pair.”
As we looked down at the shoes on the floor, each pair tied to its mate using the shoes strings of both shoes, as if to prevent each shoe from running away from the other. We stared at each other in horror. The shoes were, in most respects, sneakers. The upper part of the shoe was predominately white and bright-blue that did not resemble that of the type commonly used in sneakers. The sole matched the wide blue stripes that ran the length of the shoe across the top. The blue stripes were bespeckled with four large white and red stars that dotted the uppers from the heal to the toe. The entire shoe was shinny. Glossy, in fact, and was made entirely of plastic – at least that is what my brother and I concluded. The material has remained a family mystery ever since – but it was certainly not leather, nor was it any cloth presently known or even rubber. And, as it turned out, whatever it was, it was completely impervious to common household solvents, whether the contact was inadvertent or otherwise. The laces were a good foot longer than necessary to secure the shoe to your foot and they too were an unnaturally bright blue, with a small white and red tassel at each end. Yes, a tassel.
Our mother was madly digging to find our sizes. She could barely contain her glee. Nothing made my mother more happy than a bargain. And nothing was more of a bargain than something “free.” We had only one chance to escape the impending imprisonment of not only our feet, but our vary souls: if they had sold out of our sizes. This was not likely given the immensity of the bin and the sheer volume of shoes it contained. But we both prayed, my brother and I. It was the rare moment that the two of us found ourselves allied. We stood there as our mother pawed through pair after pair looking for a six and a seven and a half. My brother went down first as she hauled out a pair of sixes. “Try these on,” she commanded, and continued to dig.
I watched as my brother tied the bright-blue shoe strings of the second shoe. He stood there like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming sixteen wheeler. Shock gripped his body. The horror on his face was matched by the shaking of his knees. I thought he was actually going to faint.
I looked around, hoping there was no one we knew within eyeshot of the sale bin. Our mother was unaware of his condition, as she madly dug deeper and deeper into the pool of shoes looking for the seven and a halves. I began to shake. My mouth was dry and my ears felt like they were red hot. I was becoming ill. My first thought was that it might be a sympathetic reaction to my brothers pre-nervous break down I was witnessing. I soon realized, as she, my mother, emerged from the corrugated well with, a pair of seven and halves in her hands, that my illness was my own.
It seemed like an eternity, those two minutes. There we stood, the two of us, wearing our new, glossy red, blue and white starred shoes, with tasseled laces, which trailed behind us like a tether to a chain gang. Nike Zoom Turbines, they were not. I do not mean to imply that these sneakers were ahead of their time. But they were ugly in a spectacularly heretofore unknown way.
The rest of day was a blur. I remember arriving home and running into my room as fast as my legs and my feet fitted with clown shoes, could carry me. I must have looked less like a track star than a half-dressed court-jester, late for a birthday bash and animal balloon tying party, as I flew across the lawn and leaped over the front gate and darted into my room. It was not physically possible to have removed those shoes from my feet any faster. With them off, my feet and I rejoiced. The euphoria was short lived. I realized that tomorrow was the first day of school and that I would be fully expected to wear my new shoes. My life was about to end.
I wiped a small bead of sweat from my forehead and started walking. I watched the boy prance down the street in his red, white and blue Nike Zoom Turbines. I wondered if he was on his way to school in his first pair of new shoes?
