Ain't Too Proud To Beg

When she asks me to do things, I listen. I don't jump, necessarily, but I always hear her out. I need reading material. So here we are. Reading material.

I wrote once about my innate resistance to change, even if for the better. This, thankfully, has not changed. My wallet overstuffed with old gift cards and student IDs, my high school football jersey buried in a drawer somewhere, the three earrings I wore a lifetime ago packed neatly somewhere in my parents basement--my inability to give up bits of my past. It has little to do with nostalgia, that green and gold #77 jersey doesn't hold any special sentimental value. My recollections of my sleeker and stronger days don't need any physical reminders; I've integrated both good and bad memories of who and what I am and have been pretty firmly into my sense of self without needing any souvenirs. I just like to keep stuff.

I have a pair of shoes. I got them sometime after the Remix and I ended it for good (or so we thought), and before I met the future ex-wife. They're simple brown Rockports, one of the only brand names to carry the extra-extra-wide sizes I need to accomodate my freakish feet. (There's probably a whole other blog entry there, but no one would ever want to read it.) They started out nice, heavy leather and thick soles, rock 'n' roll enough to wear with jeans at a bar but serious enough to settle down nicely with a pair of khakis and a button down.

Dozens of rainstorms, errant drops of beer and Jack Daniels, tripping over curbs, and a steady diet of road salt all took their toll over time. The supple leather grew stiff, and then surrendered completely to a texture more like well worn cotton. The heel of the right shoe is wedge-shaped, worn smooth on one side from thousands of miles of working the gas pedal. The soles are a distant memory, in some places worn thin enough to see the leather bottom of the shoe. The heels are crushed, from day after day of jamming my monstrous feet in without bothering to untie them. The laces are so frayed that the brown covering is all gone, exposing the densely intertwined bits of string that just barely hold the tongue down.

I love my shoes. I don't have any memories with them, there's no pictures of me with the shoes at the Grand Canyon or cuddling up on the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. For the last year or so, everyone I know has mentioned at one time or another that I really needed new ones, but I never quite made it out to buy any. And then.

Monday, the Remix and I went out to see Harriet and Mr. Spy for a new year's party. The Remix wasn't appalled enough to forbid my wearing the shoes in public. Just barely. She laughed when she said it, there were no hard feelings, I don't feel like she's running my life--but when she asks, I listen. You have got to get new shoes. Today. She was right, too.

So here I sit, a brand new pair of shoes resting comfortably by the door on my left. Simple brown Rockports. Similar enough to my other pair that they could be twins. Yes, the kind of twins where one has grown up to be a eminent heart surgeon and the other just came off yet another three day crystal meth binge, but twins nonetheless. The new shoes are great, just as comfortable, easier to walk in (you try to balance in shoes with a third of the sole missing), and snappy enough to hang with the khaki pants crowd. There was no reason not to get new ones, I just needed a prod in the right direction. Well, more like a horse kick in the right direction, but you get the point.

She couldn't have made me do it. She wouldn't have, either. She knows I hang on to things. The leopard print pillow she made me all those years ago. The songs she downloaded to my computer in college. The story that I wrote for her the day she needed one worst. It's not sentimental. Really. I just like to keep stuff.