Last Sunday night, I was walking to work in the rain (my Metro ticket had recently expired, but that´s beside the point!) when I was alerted to a strange, uncomfortable, even unpleasant sensation in my shoe. No more that a few seconds interlude was needed to identify the source as being a healthy dose of sludgy, street-born rain water, seeping ever so carefully through a hole in my boot´s sole, that up until that point I hadn´t known existed. Carefully staunching the cry that attempted to escape my lips (these were not only boots, but old friends…black, slouched, pointed-toe wonders that had cost me $8, 5 years earlier and survived international travel, snow and the physical attacks of small children), I wandered on, feigning a sort of dry-socked comfort and dodging the night’s first wave of battered, drunken tourits. Arriving at work and changing my old friends for a pair of grubby sneakers, I wondered if I should thank the winter rain for alerting me to the fact that my boots had succumed; or curse it for allowing that information to penetrate my happy relationship with them. This was not the first time the rain had advised me of a well-formed hole in a loved pair of shoes; and the fact that the first pair lost to me were still sitting in my wardrobe 18 months after their demise (so unenthusiastic was I to part with them), seemed only to suggest that my mourning period for these boots would be long indeed. Friends (particularly those whose finances, like mine, limit them to bargain shopping) suggested becoming close friends with Gaffer tape. But, as my boots’ lining carked it several months ago, I’m wasn´t convinced that the supposed thousand uses of our friend Gaff could stretch to breathing life back into footware so clearly past its prime.
Why is it that sometimes we don´t realise that a situation, relationship or hope is flawed until rudely awakened to the fact? Why don´t we look closer, harder, more frequently, more fervently? Through earlier inspection, we may repair boots before holes develop; remember that we have a saucepan on the stove before the meal burns; maintain good relationships with friends before their previously cute idiosyncracies become itching annoyances; or with partners before potential cheaters succumb to temptation. Or, could looking closer, harder, more frequently, more fervently be construed as obsession, as unhealthy…as an inability to throw up your hands and just go with the flow, seeing how things work out.
For now, my black, slouched, pointed-toe wonders sit next to my zippy sky-blue Converse in the bottom of my wardrobe; my toast is still bread; and my friends’ idiosyncracies remain cute.
