High Aspirations

The incredibly cute shoe you see has haunted me since April. I saw a pinker version in a store window and once inside saw a milder tan model. I think maybe I tried them on. I think maybe they weren't worth seperation of cash and wallet. I think maybe every time I see them I feel a flutter in my heart.

I glamorize them and thereby glamorize my feet with them on. The perfect summertime shoe (and since there are only a few weeks of summer left this infatuation should end). Light, airy, comfortable (did I mention I tried them on and instictively winced where blisters would appear?) and gorgeous.

That is what I know to be true when I see them. Once I've stepped away I reconsider. This is a shoe more suitable for a coastal surfer with messy hair, a ripped t-shirt and damp boardshorts. Someone suffering for their art...entertainment...livelihood? A poor impressionable youth of the male gender. That is who this shoe is for.

Except that this shoe is for me. I've talked myself out of it multiple times, except when I found them at a sidewalk sale. The only reason I don't own this shoe is my size was gone in the acceptable color and pattern. But looking at this shoe online tonight I remembered an aspiring goal made by me and my highschool friend Oliver.

We would somehow give up on life, or at least the first year of college and make our way to California. Once there we'd become Beach Bums. Captilized because we'd romanticized it. Life couldn't suck if the sand was your pillow and the ocean your lullaby. Oliver made it a bit closer than me. His family actually moved to Southern California and he followed them later. I desperately clung to the mountains, afraid of giving up my winters.

The purchase of this shoe could change all that, I'm just $49.95 away from a life of leisure and garbage-bin breakfasts.