Change is afoot--in living color!

Old and new

When I first tried on my new walking shoes, I had to reassure myself: at least they don't look like old-lady shoes. Unless, of course, the old lady is colorblind. Or suffering from dementia or a terminal lack of taste. Next week I'll be walking the streets of Louisville while random strangers glance at my new shoes and then throw me that pitying gaze we reserve for the damaged who walk amongst us. Poor old girl, they'll tell themselves, but how brave that she's still willing to step out in public in her condition.

But I bought them anyway. Better than going barefoot, right?

I’m not sure just when my good walking shoes transformed themselves into my old walking shoes, but this spring they slid far enough down that slippery slope to become my stomping-around-in-mud shoes. It was clearly time for some new shoes and I wanted some just like my old walking shoes, the only walking shoes I’ve ever owned that don’t make my right big toe go numb. (Don’t ask. I can’t explain it.) So I went to the athletic shoe store at the mall to find a replacement pair.

There are actually two athletic shoe stores at our mall, but long ago I realized that the sales clerks in one of the stores all suffer from a peculiar visual deficiency—call it middle-aged lady blindness. I walk in the store and they see this sort of shimmering void, and the only way to convince them that I exist is to wave a shiny credit card in front of their eyes, but even then they’ll act as if I’m interrupting some very important activity, like staring into space. Since that store refuses to see me, I refuse to recognize the store’s existence and I go to the other athletic shoe store, which for me is the only athletic shoe store.

There I found my walking shoes in the right brand, style, and size, but I wouldn’t call it the color right. In fact I’m not quite sure what to call that color; it looks like what Rainbow Brite would vomit after drinking too much Windex. I wouldn’t call it me, exactly, but I need new shoes now and alternate colors available for order aren’t all that much better, so I bought the shoes. 

Now I walk the country roads looking as if I’ve just stolen the shoes right off the feet of a colorblind demented taste-deprived old lady—but at least I’m not invisible!