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T. Kid's Favorite Sneakers

Forget food, beer, or sex. The only thing I love more than my collection of blue low-top sneakers is weed.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I’ve loved sneakers since I was a toddler. Jootiyan, the Urdu word for footwear, was one of my first words, according to my mother. She said I insisted I wear shoes at all times, and once showed me several baby photos of me wearing nothing but little blue low-top sneakers, as I ran around the house smacking fixtures with a hairbrush. My mother indulged my sneaker obsession when I wore baby sizes, but once I grew older and more demanding, she reined it in. When I was eight, I began attending a Catholic school where we had to wear uniforms—navy pants and white button-up shirts. There was no restriction on footwear, so shoes were the only way to look fly, and competition was tight. I begged my mom for a pair of the newly released Jordan VIII. “All the other kids’ parents get them nice sneakers, because they know how important it is to look cool,” I complained. She shot back, “Those parents buy their kids expensive things to make up for not spending time with them, and they secretly hate themselves. Do you want me to hate myself?” She was hard to argue with. Instead of the Jordan shoes, my mom got me a pair of plain low-top sneakers similar to the ones I wore in my baby pictures. At first I hated them. Compared to the other kids’ bulky, multi-paneled basketball shoes, my sneakers were meager. My shoes gave my peers a new reason to scorn me. I was already a pretty weird kid, and my weak sneaker game only brought me more negative attention.

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When I was alone, I found a way to appreciate my lame shoes. They kept my feet out of trouble when I was exploring in the woods or playing at an unattended construction site. I would sit on the curb and pull nails and bits of glass out of the soles, as I thought, That could have been in my foot. My mom noticed how beaten up my shoes had gotten and told me it was time for new shoes. She questioned me when I didn’t look excited. I told her, “I know I said I didn’t like them, but now I do. Sure, they’re not as cool as the Jordan VIII sneakers, but they’re mine. I’ve done a lot of stuff with them.” My love for my shoes moved her. She smiled, pulled me in for a hug, and then said, “That’s sweet, but seriously, those are disgusting. You’re getting new shoes.”

My next pair of sneakers was different—they were what was on sale at the store. Shoes came and went, but none of them felt as special as the blue low-tops. Years later, after we had left Thailand for the US, I came upon the same pair of sneakers. This time they were in adult sizes. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was still relatively new to smoking weed. My friends and I went on a blunt drive to the local mall. We were wandering around when I spotted the sneakers. I spent the last of my allowance on them and walked out of the store wearing them. I couldn’t believe that my beloved childhood kicks had re-entered my life. It felt like fate.

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Later that evening, we went to hang out with a kid named Eric. He was kind of a nut job, but he had a bunch of weed and was happy to smoke us out if we came to his house. As we were walking across the lawn, he opened his front door. His dog bolted out from behind him and immediately attacked my shoes. Eric yelled, “Roxy! Get back here!” and then she left me alone. When we walked into Eric’s house, we heard his mom scream at him about letting the dog out. He rudely responded to her, and they started arguing, making my friends and me a bit uncomfortable. We ignored the argument and went upstairs to Eric’s room. He walked in after us and shut the door, muting some more screams from his mom. Eric sat down and made chitchat with us as he rolled a joint. The room was incredibly messy. I quickly noticed a gross smell. I glanced at my friends and saw that they had smelt the same scent. Eric’s mom’s screams grew louder, so Eric left the room to argue with her some more. As soon as he walked out, my friend said what we were all thinking: “Why does it smell like shit in here?” We looked around the room for a possible source. Eric began stomping back up the stairs, so we stopped talking. He walked in, shut the door, and winced. “Damn,” he said, “that is one nasty fart. Who was that?” We all looked at each other as Eric opened the window. He laughed. “Someone better claim that one. That’s a champion.”

He went back to rolling the joint for about 30 seconds before looking up and wincing again. “Seriously. Why is that fart not going away?” He eyed each of us. One of my friends said, “Hey man, it’s not us. It’s probably something in here.” My friend had upset Eric. “My room doesn’t smell like shit! I think I would have noticed it before! It’s definitely one of you. Check the bottoms of your shoes.” At his request, I lifted my brand new blue low-top sneakers off of his carpet, revealing a massive wad of dog shit. I was amazed that I hadn’t noticed it before—it was large enough to make me walk lopsided. Eric screamed and lunged at me. In one fluid motion, he snatched the shoe off my foot and flung it out the window into the woods behind his house. Screaming, he pointed at a line of shit tracks that I left in his room. He followed the tracks out of the room, raging loudly all the way down the stairs. We all followed him. I saw the aftermath my sneakers had wrought all over his house. Eric’s screaming prompted his mom to begin screaming again. Her screams started to get closer and then stopped for a moment as soon as she entered the room. Horrified, she surveyed the damage. She exploded. “Why is there shit all over my house?” she screamed. She was loud enough to scare us all right out the front door. “You guys should get the fuck out of here!” Eric yelled after us, as if we weren’t running fast enough.

My friends and I jumped into the car, but I wasn’t ready to go. “I have to get that shoe back,” I told the guys. They told me I was crazy, but I knew I was meant to wear them. “If it wasn’t for that shoe, that shit would be all over my sock right now,” I said. My friends were dumbfounded. I ran out of the car and snuck along the side of Eric’s house. Through some miracle, I found the shoe stuck in a bush right by the edge of the woods. I grabbed it and ran back to the car. My friend wouldn’t unlock the door. He rolled down his window and said, “There’s no way in hell you’re bringing that shitty shoe into the car.” He was my only ride home, but I backed away from the car and sat down on the curb. I grabbed a stick and started scraping the shit off my shoe. Right then, Eric popped out of his front door and yelled, “You’re still here?” This startled us. “Throw it in the trunk,” my friend said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

After thoroughly cleaning the shoe, I wore the low-tops until they were completely destroyed, and then I wore them some more. I loved them even more than my previous pair. I’ve piled up a lot of sneakers since then, but you can always catch me in a pair of low-top sneakers like the ones I had as a kid.

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