what i bought this weekend: ugliest. shoes. ever.

I didn’t mean to do it. Buy these shoes, I mean.

After a lovely afternoon spent getting a facial at the Aveda Institute (so cheap! so relaxing!) and watching “Once” at the Landmark (so romantic! such good music!), my intention was to buy some cute retro sneakers for the walks I do every year. At some point, I’d like to lose enough weight to actually run the Shamrock Shuffle instead of the shorter Shamrock Shuffle walk (which to me seems to be made for the chubby, infirm, and lazy). But until then, I will walk that and other races — Chase Corporate Challenge, Race to the Taste, Rudolph Run — in these profoundly ugly yet comfortable sneakers.

It’s the least I can do. The cute guy at the store was so helpful. He made me walk barefoot around the store so he could examine my walk. I felt self-conscious, for though my pedicure was intact, no amount of Chanel nail polish can change the fact my feet look like Fred Flintstone’s. He recommended the 1122, which are for running and suited my wide feet. Apparently, I bear down on my heel, which the shoe will correct or do whatever it needs to do so I won’t have worn my feet down to stubs by the time I’m the age of the old lady I saw on the bus this morning who was wearing the exact same shoes.

I have been wearing them — they’re too comfortable not to wear, even if the words “geriatric raver” come to mind whenever I look at them. They have all this fancy stuff like a Rollbar that keeps my feet from wobbling from side to side. They are a 9.5 extra-wide, a size I didn’t know even existed. They have paint on them now because I wore them all day Saturday for the Chicago Serve-a-thon, which found me painting classrooms at a school in South Shore. They’re probably the greatest shoes that ever happened to me but I am far too superficial to look past their appearance. I imagine that this is what it must be like to date a really sweet, smart, and funny guy who is not even remotely good-looking or sexy.

And am I wearing them now? Of course not. I’m at work, and carpeting is alright even if I’m wearing shoes that are a size too big or too high. I should be wearing them, but I wore pink Jack Purcells instead. The Purcells are no slouches in the comfort department — they’re not even pinching, even though they are not extra wide — but they don’t give me the extra height the geriatric raver New Balance 1122 sneakers do.

~ by Jasmine on June 13, 2007.