Shoes

I have a difficult time understanding my shoes. I don’t think its because the shoes have some intention to be confusing, but all the same, I struggle to understand their ways. Sure they behave shoe like most of the time, never running off of my foot unless I am in agreance; and in fact they seldom even come untied which cannot be said for my running shoes. No, my only problem with these shoes, brown and tattered as they are, is that they do not stick. Had it been any other year, I might not have even noticed but with the winters we have had, and now this great muddy earth we have, these shoes do not stick.

Unless my shoes are beyond of me in the evolution of transportation, their function should be to lift and move in a forward manner – and do so on my command. These shoes, these shoes that I am wearing, the brown and tattered ones, slide. They come together and the spread in unpredictable fashion and slide this way and that, all without me ever lifting my foot. It is something of a precarious predicament I find myself in when my shoes move on their own. I am none to small and my balance, the balance I assume I should have received in the genetic line up, was given in double share to someone else.

I feel somewhat silly, when battling with my shoes, taking so tiny a step and lifting my foot so terribly high, while all shapes of classmates whiz by me on their wonderfully treaded soles. Even on the sand the shoes will sometimes slide – jerking forward while I convulse in their air, beating my arms wildly as if flying were a more feasible way to transport.

And now we have the mud. Mud generally does not stay around as long as the ice, but then again, the ice didn’t used to stay around so long either. It may be time to retire my shoes to that growing bin in my closet of all shoes past and present and seek out a pair with sticking powers; these shoes have been through a lot with me though, and I’ve grown attached to these shoes, so brown and tattered.