For years, I struggled to find shoes that outfitted my feet properly. Nikes were too narrow, Reeboks too. I found myself getting size 9½ or ten shoes, 1 to 1½ sizes too big, just to fit the breadth of my foot at the baseline of my toes. My heels would know way too much freedom, and my ankles spent most of my youth encased in ace bandages hidden beneath my socks. Yes, we'll blame that on the shoes...sure, yes. I wasn't clumsy or anything. Not at all. Forget that thought ever entered your mind.

...

Somewhere in my early teenage years, a small weapon against adolescent awkwardness did then appear. It was delivered unto me in the form of a shoe that went by the name New Balance (hereafter referred to as "NB"). It was the first shoe to cater to the width of my feet, the first shoe to earn my trust, and the first shoe to grace my girlish fantasies. I haven't desired the wear of another athletic shoe since.

They say you need to replace your shoes every 500 miles...do you have any concept of how fast I walk through 500 miles!? It has slowed since moving to Wisconsin, but in North Carolina I was walking 15-20 miles every day. That's a new pair of shoes every month! I tend to burn rubber a bit longer than 500 miles, to say the least.

I tie the topmost laces super-duper-uber tight...so tight that I have permanent wear marks on my...on my...hmm...heel pit? The patch of leg beneath the shin and above the foot?...yeah, there. They are quite striking with the pre-NB wear marks on my big toe joints, and I am thinking of entering them in a pageant this fall.



With feet such as these, one could see why I would pamper them so. I mean, triangular, flat, and duck-like is special enough...but to add the scarring atop the heap makes them practically invaluable. My mother, my fellow fiend in finding functional footwear (don't you just love alliteration?), gave me a new pair for my birthday. The new NBs, as all those who have come before, chant a lover's mantra in my ears, they seduce me with pretty words, and sculpt my feet into mad pacing machines. May they never hold their tongue or compromise their sole!