How many shoes are too many shoes?
I think we've gotten carried away with shoes. I had one pair of black high top Converse and a black pair of really painful dress shoes I would go to Sunday school in or funerals. I went on a shopping mission this last weekend, had to buy a new pair of black dress shoes. My other pair died. That only left the one pair of browns, totally throwing off my whole mechanical progression of my work clothes application or MPWCA. The death of my blacks reduced my dress shoe choices in my closet by 50%. I know enough that wearing brown shoes with black pants is a fashion gaffes and I didn't want to be gaffed so, I went to the store-a big shoe store, a store with initials and a ceiling that went up two stories and twelve rows of shoes.
The men section had one row, maybe a row and a half, I forgot about the sandals. The shoes took up about as much room as a driveway-to a small patio home. The rest of the store was all women's shoes. Every square inch.
Now, understand, I think most men my age don't have a lot of shoes. Younger guys, they have multiple colors, shapes, highs and lows-all kinds. The American metro-sexual male loves their shoes. But if you're middle age or beyond, still compare the price of a six-pack of Fruit of the Looms, or Jockey whites with any other, and secretly ice parts of your body you don't want people to know about, you have to keep it simple. The closet just won't hold a lot so you reduce your ownership to some good running shoes even though your ACL is so warn out you can't run, a pair of flip flops you've had since that arrest in Tulsa, and a pair-one single pair of black and one pair of brown dress shoes. What else do you need, right?
Look, women's shoes are way out of control. They have shoes that will actually, if worn for ten days or more, kill them. That's right, they will kill the woman. A woman or some guy wanting to wear, well, women's shoes, will fall off those things, being unable to do a good tuck and roll, and land on their shoulder and side of their head. They'll get up and be embarrassed, refusing any help or a call for the paramedics. They will go home and put some ice on their knee because, yes their ACL is blown and two days later, they're found by their sister dead on the toilet, killed by that pesky sneak, a blood clot to the brain.
Yeah, that's what happens to people who wear those shoes. This store also has stuff that you have to lash on; boots that are more expensive then the cow they'll be branding. Very expensive beach flip flops that have thousands of those little sequins glued on. I'm thinking we go buy those rubber 'thongs' we use to call them, at the dollar store, a pound of sequins, and four or five dollars worth of Elmer's and we make our own, attach a fancy name with only one vowel in it, and sell them for a hundred dollars each.
I had four boxes of blacks sitting in front of me to try on. They all looked the same and frankly, men shop price. That is the big decider. The next most important factor is comfort. How is that sole? Does it have one of those pillow things in them? The only other thing to decide is slip on or shoe string?
Luckily, they both, my blacks and browns, look good with my white tube socks.
