Do these shoes make my brain look fat? (call for literary criticism)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I wrote this a while back and wanted to know what you SDMBers thought of it. Be gentle. (also be warned…it’s a novella.)

SHOES I HAVE WALKED IN

By Troy Smith

The first pair of shoes I remember owning were denim cowboy boots. That’s right, denim. I was probably no more than four or five years old, and my dad took all of us to a big boot store in Oak Cliff (a suburb of Dallas). My older brother was running up and down the aisles looking at snakeskin; at full-quill ostrich; at elephant hide; a menagerie of exotic leathers. I, on the other hand, saw this pair of denim boots and fell in love. “Look, daddy!” I said. “Blue-jean feet!” He tried to talk me out of them but I wouldn’t even look at any other boots, and eventually he shrugged and got them for me. I proudly wore them all the time, even with my pajamas.

I wonder what ever happened to those boots.

The next pair of shoes that stand out in my memory were the sneakers I bought to wear to summer camp the first time I ever went. It was Camp Longhorn in southwestern Texas. The camp uniform was orange and white-orange shorts with white piping, white T-shirts with the Camp Longhorn logo in orange. I decided to get a pair of Converse All-Stars in orange so they would match. As you probably know, the main sartorial contribution that Converse All-Stars make to an outfit is to make the wearer’s feet look as though they are about a yard long. (I also got a bright orange baseball hat to complete the look.) They may have looked silly, but those sneakers carried me down nature trails, across streams, up and down the camp cliff, and more. They carried me through the first taste of independence from my parents that I ever experienced.

I wonder what ever happened to those orange monster-feet.

When I was twelve, I was sent to military school. The shoes I was issued there are significant for two reasons: they were the first pair of shoes I was expected to actually take care of, and they had REALLY slick soles. (More on this in a moment.) I got really good at shining shoes. My shining kit consisted of black shoe polish, neutral shoe polish for the final layers, a strip of flannel to daub the polish on the shoes and then work it into a gleaming shell, and a candle to warm the polish so it would go on in thinner layers. I could make a shoe so shiny that you could look into the reflection and read the numbers on a door ten feet away.

The school was in Missouri. Snowy winters are the norm there, and the sidewalk leading to Science Hall had a ramp that always became quite slippery with packed-down snow. Cadets encouraged this because it was fun to get a running start and then slide down the ramp on the slippery soles of those shoes. One year we divided the ramp into three strips: bare concrete for teachers and such, packed snow for garden-variety sliders, and ice for the steely-eyed elite. Those who dared the icy strip could get up an amazing head of steam. I was a snow-level slider myself…I liked a little excitement but wasn’t real interested in death.

I wonder what-no, actually I know what happened to those shoes. They wound up hanging from the branch of a tree at the end of the year.

That brings us full-circle to cowboy boots again. When I graduated from military school and went off to college, my father treated me to a new pair of boots. This time I chose a pair of gray bull-hide boots that made me feel ten feet tall and indestructible. I didn’t wear them all the time, because I discovered that the college I was attending viewed boot-wearers as shit-kickers until proven otherwise, but I loved them. One day, I got a call at work from my girlfriend, who said she had driven past my apartment and all of my stuff was out on the front yard. (So I hadn’t paid rent in a while…is that a crime?) I got over there in time to save some of my stuff, but I lost my camera, my way-cool neon beer sign…and my boots.
Damn.

I wonder what ever happened to those boots?

Now I’m in the working world, but in a “creative” field (writing) in which being a real live grownup would be something of a liability. My current shoes reflect that dichotomy; from above they look basically like regular black dress shoes, but they have soles like sneakers. I love them because they’re hip and relaxed, just like my job. And when I’m pacing up and down because I’m stuck for a word, the soles don’t squeak – so no one knows that my eloquence has boundaries. They’re in good shape and, if I resole them regularly, there’s no telling how long they’ll last; as for my job, it seems to be going well too, and if I keep the underpinnings of my talent fresh there’s no telling how long IT will last.

I wonder what’s going to happen to these shoes?

Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

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Hey Monsieur Le Chef - Nice little story you have goin’ here. I like the idea. However, I think it would be much more effective if you took each pair of shoes’ life and describe it as parallell to your own life at that time. Cowboy boots reflecting the inner fantasy-imaginative world of a young boy, watching cowboy flicks & cartoons, etc. Sneakers can reflect an attmepted bout with sports, the sport crowd, or other like-minded sneaker-oriented group. I think you get the picture.

Just some tips from the daughter writer of a writer.

:smiley:

“I can never give a ‘yes’ of a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable” *Betty Smith

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Hi Chef,

I, too, like the idea, but I think I’d like it even better if you developed each little segment so that it tells us more about what was going on in your life (or in your imagination or whatever) at the time. That way it’d be easier for me to wonder along with you, “whatever happened…”

For instance, the segment about Camp Longhorn nicely depicts the nature of Converse All-Stars, but it doesn’t say much about you yourself and what kind of kid you were. It might be fun, say, to play with the theme of your pre-teen interest in fashion and your sense of what looked good (orange???).

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[in my tough voice] Hey! You got a problem with orange?!!?! [/in my tough voice]

“Organs gross me out. That’s organs, not orgasms.”
-the wallster

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Well, I jes’ plain liked it, especially the “what ever happened to” bits. Beats the hell out of the stuff I’ve been editing all day . . .

Me, I still think fondly back on a pair of Joan Crawford “Fuck-Me Pumps” from the '40s I got at a thrift store and wore dancing. Great black ankle-strap shoes with open toes and little rhinestones at the cut-out.

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Thanks, Eve. Listen up, everybody! Eve has the right idea here. When I say I want constructive criticism, of COURSE what I really mean is to keep your negative comments to yourself and just say you love it. :smiley:

I wrote this a couple of years ago as a sort of autobiography from the viewpoint of the shoes I’ve worn. I added the last vignette when I posted it here, to bring it up to date. Ophelia, your suggestion has merit, but the point of the way I wrote this was to give people the opportunity to fill in the blanks for themselves.

Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

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Whoops, I was talking about Mikan’s suggestion, not Ophelia’s. Ophelia’s is full of crap. (just kidding!)

Ophelia, your suggestion also has merit, but it would fictionalize what is supposed to be an autobiography of sorts. I was never into cowboy stuff as a kid, nor did my orange sneakers correspond with any kind of interest in athletic activity (I only run when something is chasing me.)

Live a Lush Life
Da Chef