Old Shoes

          Old shoes have always been in my closet.  I don't know what it is about me and my old shoes. Frugality I guess.  It's the old "you never know when I might need them" syndrome.  I wasn't raised in poverty and I don't remember my parents necessarily encouraging it so I don't know where I got this habit.  But I tend to hang on to old shoes until they look rather unbecoming.

          I will slip them on to go out to pick up the mail or take out the trash.  I might even wear a pair of old shoes to run an errand like going to the post office or the bank.  After all, no one needs to be looking at my shoes when I'm doing those things.

         There is not just one pair of old shoes in my closet.  There are new and old versions of dress shoes, casual shoes, sport shoes, and even bedroom slippers.  It has nothing to do with comfort either.  Sometimes the old shoes aren't really comfortable.  It's more to do with functionality.  Old shoes are good if it's raining really hard and the water is up to my ankles.  I don't feel bad about ruining old shoes.

          Or what if I'm forced to walk through someplace that's really nasty like a vast expanse of mud?    I've walked across muddy fields before and come home with Frankenstein boots made of mud.  Those are the times when there's no point in cleaning your shoes--you just throw them away.  Better to throw away old shoes than new shoes.

          Sometimes I've had dreams where I go somewhere and look at my feet and I'm wearing an old pair of shoes.  I go through the dream worrying that someone will see them.  Once, something similar to this actually happened to me. 

             I was in high school.  My father was about to drop me off at school when I looked at my feet and noticed I had put on one new shoe and one old shoe.  I guess in the dim morning light I hadn't noticed since the styles were the same and they didn't feel any different.  My father wasn't about to take me back home to change them and I was forced to suffer the day with the mismatched pair on my feet.  Nobody noticed.  But in high school I don't think that many people really noticed me anyway.

              What is it about me and old shoes, or for that matter, old clothes, old books, old this, and old that?  When I think about it I guess I have a lot of things that are kind of old.  I wonder if when you start accumulating a lot of things that are old it means you are old.  If I got rid of all the old stuff and just had new stuff I'd still be the same age. 

                I'd better just hang on to the old shoes for now.  They're predicting rain this week end.  I might have to walk through some mud.   Then I can toss out the old shoes.



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