The worst pair of shoes I've ever owned
The size and location of the sale should have tipped me off. "Buy three pairs for the price of one," the Bass outlet at the beach said. I needed a new pair of work shoes in early July before starting my new job. Like so many fish in the water surrounding the Outer Banks, I took the bait.
I'd owned several pairs of Bass shoes before, and the company had a distinguished shoe history. Charles Lindbergh wore Bass on his historic flight across the Atlantic. Admiral Byrd explored the Antarctic in a pair.
With my three new pairs — dress, boat and loafer — there were early signs of trouble. The night I got back from the beach, I wore the boat shoes to Five Guys. The walk was 10 minutes each way. When I got home, I took off the shoes and felt fine. The next day, I stumbled as I tried to get out of bed. My heels and ankles were destroyed. As a guy who didn't think much about feet (much like you, I imagine), I had no idea what to think. A pair of shoes had never kicked my ass before. I worried for the doomed Lindberghs, Byrds and Coopers of the future.
It took two weeks to recover from that burger. I stuck the boat shoes in the closet. For the duration, I wore my old dress shoes to work and kept the new ones in the box. When all felt good again, the new ones came out. Their next six months, their only six months, were tragedy.
The heels started to give first. I wore through the layers one by one, and they wore my feet in return. Then the fronts of the shoes rubbed down. Not the whole fronts, mind you, just the insides of both fronts, for seemingly no reason. Did I absentmindedly rub my toes on Metro's escalator stairs? Had my shoes grown magnetized, scraping together there, without me noticing or falling over? Were my big toes making a break for it, with help from the outside? Then the situation worsened.
If I'd wanted to see through my shoes, I would have bought sandals. But like our Lego friend above, I went unwillingly on a journey of heel self-discovery, and anyone who followed me down the street or up an escalator in December and January did the same. The back of the right shoe fell apart slowly. First, there was a chill. The chill became an icing, and the icing a blizzard or hurricane or something worse. I learned not to step in puddles. I stopped running to beat lights. I began to wonder if anyone noticed. Walking to work last week, I heard a girl behind me laughing. Chances were she was checking her phone. But I worried. If women judged men on shoes, my shoes said I was king of the hobos. And king of the hobos was no king at all, unless you were in a boxcar.
A trip to the mall yesterday brought new shoes. The Bass pair went in the record books for the earliest death ever for a pair of my shoes. I'd always worked my shoes hard, with no pair lasting much more than a year. But Bass had distinguished itself in the annals of shoe loserdom. The pain, the embarrassment, the blisters, the ventilation — the Bass. I laced my new shoes today and took the Bass pair to the trash chute.
Goodbye, you spiteful three-for-one shoe bastards! I'll see you in hell.
Sincerely,
Former king of the hobos
January 24th, 2011 at 10:51 AM
So what do the new shoes look like? Brand? Price? Estimated lifespan?
January 27th, 2011 at 7:48 AM
The new ones, but in brown and at a much better price. I'm hoping for a year out of them.
April 8th, 2011 at 9:47 AM
[...] As you know, I'm no shoe connoisseur. [...]