Sole Searching Stories
Stories the shoes told me once I looked into their sole.
Beginning at the young age of twelve, she spent years teaching herself assorted forms of art. She studied simple chord progression tunes on the piano and jazz rhythmic figures on the saxophone. Her grandfather taught her how to crochet and sew. Her friends taught her how to sculpt and mold clay. Her lover taught her how to act and sing on the stage. She spent weeks and months training before she would move on to another lesson. Within every teaching, she forgot to practice and maintain her skills learned within the last art form and lost it slowly. By the time she applied for colleges, she could not decide upon just one skill (or lack thereof) and decided to study arts interdisciplinary. Ultimately unsuccessful in every craft attempted or relearned, she failed out of university. She bought these boots to cheer herself up.
She lives a dark life, quite literally. Her upbringing was lovely as was her journey into adulthood, but dark colors always overcome her presence no matter how she dresses. Some deem the woman to be cursed because her dark matter began to affect her physical surroundings. Pigeons, for example, rid of green parakeets and yellow ducks, replacing them with their grey gloom. The most colorful piece of clothing that has yet to somber in her shadows are the electric neon patterns that line her tennis shoes which she has worn every day for nineteen days, two months, and three years. When she looks down, she smiles.
Bullied in middle through high school, she knew she was destined to eventually rise to the top. One day, she came home after school crying while her aunt was in town. Together, they made a list of all those she intended to get revenge on after her bullies would ideally peak in high school. While attending university in London, she met and befriended Alessandra Gucci, great-granddaughter of Guccio Gucci. It did not take long for their friendship to turn when Alessandra framed her for the 1990 City Bonds Robbery. £291.9 million United Kingdom bearer bonds were stolen. After one-month locked up, the police released her on account of not finding a single connection to the case. When she arrived back at university, she noticed these sneakers with an apology post-it note from Alessandra, who was soon added to her revenge list.
O the love triangle between two friends and a clueless boy. Here lies true triangular chaos, for the one on the far right spends her days pondering over the center sneakers while the far left is in love with her best friend on the far right. The two are inseparable. The friend on the left can not bring herself to tell her friend on the right how she truly feels because she doesn’t want to ruin the friendship, which is how the far right feels about the khakis in the middle. It gets worse because the boy in the center has equal feelings of love and hate for both of them, consistently caught in a crossroads.
He never considered the danger of shoelaces. Moments before the midnight that would begin the new year and his birthday, he spiraled into the realization that he was completely useless. With three minutes to spare, he walked outside in search of meaning to conclude the year. Diagonally across the street he noticed a homeless woman, so he thought, with bare feet. He crouched down, untied his "high tops," and removed them, leaving him with thin candy-striped socks to keep warm. Smiling, he jogged over and handed the shoes to the cold woman while wishing her a “Happy New Year.” Offended, she yelled that she was not homeless and tossed the high tops into the street. He nodded and walked over to retrieve his footwear. While picking up the right shoe, he stepped back and slipped on the left shoe’s laces backward into a passing bicycle. He purchased only slip ons that year and every year after, but these are his favorites.