I bought some trainers this evening. I have only recently got in to wearing trainers. It is all part of my mid-life crisis. It is pathetic. Both that I didn't wear trainers when I was young and that I have chosen to start wearing them now. I am idiot. If you haven't got that by now then you haven't been paying attention.
But the trainers I had on were a bit fucked (and too fucked to look good), and I had an hour to kill before meeting a friend, so I went down fashionable Carnaby Street and bought some new ones.
I decided to wear the new trainers out of the shop - which isn't something I've done at a shoe shop since I was a child. That used to be quite exciting when you bought new shoes. "Do you want to wear them out of the shop?" you might be asked and for some reason the idea of buying new shoes and immediately wearing them appealed to my child mind. It was the best thing about going to the shoe shop, after having your foot measured in that machine that would mechanically move to give your exact shoe size. It's no fun going shoe shopping when you just know your shoe size. I think they should still check it each time. I hate being a grown up.
Anyway the man in the trainers shop (is that any kind of job for an adult? Selling trainers? Pathetic) told me that if I wore them out of the shop then I wouldn't be able to bring them back if anything was wrong with them. But I decided to live dangerously. I didn't want to wear my old rubbish trainers that were falling apart and had been damaged in the rain. I wanted my stupidly new trainers, which would look a bit too new and would be stamped on by anyone who happened to bump into me who had been at school with me (that's what my schoolfellows used to do at school and I can see no reason why they would have changed now).
But having dumped the trainer box I was still lumbered with my old trainers. They weren't totally unwearable, but I knew I would never want to wear them again. Yet it still seemed like a shame to just throw them away.
Inspired by my recent bookcrossing experiences I decided I would just leave them out in the street for someone else to have if they wanted them. You never know, that might be someone who wanted someone else's old, screwed up trainers and who happened to have size 8 feet.
Of course I hadn't registered my trainers on a trainers website, so I would never find out who (if anyone) wanted the trainers, but it was nice to think that they might end up in someone else's hands - well on their feet, but you know.
Maybe there could be websites set up for everything, not just books. Then when we'd done with something we just left it out in the street and someone else could use it. Or maybe all possessions just belong to everyone, which as I believe, was the Aborigine way.
I think the best I can hope is that a tramp is out there somewhere sporting my old trainers. To be honest the trainers probably got thrown away. But a man can dream. A man can dream
