Sensible Shoes (An ode to Lauren Michelle)

I've been having these dreams lately. I don't remember every detail - of course - but what I do remember is the...feeling.

I’ve had this same dream at least twice. The gist of it is I’m running from the cops and they have me surrounded. For some reason we’re on this farmland and I’m hiding near a barn. Then I get a call from by boy Troy. I know he’s dead and I should be worried about my own survival at that point, but I’m more than happy to stop and have a conversation with him. I see this “farmhand” in my peripheral. I know he’s a cop but I continue talking to Troy anyway. Then the cop gets off the tractor and rushes to me, gun in hand, and at this same exact point of the dream I wake up.

***

This morning/yesterday morning/every morning as I'm traveling to work in my perpetual nonplussed state, looking into the unhappy dead eyes of my fellow cadavers on the iron horse, my mind starts to wander. What were their dreams once upon a time? What did they want to do? Who did they want to be? Surely what they’re doing and where they’re going can’t be it. Then I think about myself and my own eventual epitaph:  

Here lies a man that wore sensible shoes.

I like shoes. My cousin Lauren has a wicked shoe game. We laugh about getting older and having to wear sensible shoes. I think it’s a family thing. She made me promise that if I ever see her in sensible shoes that I’m to kill her on sight. It’s a promise I look forward to keeping. I remember being with my cousin Melanie, and her mother - my aunt Marcella - came over to us and Melanie said “Aw, look at mom wearing her sensible shoes.” I remember my aunt not finding that funny.  

I think wearing sensible shoes under a certain age is a sign of waving the white flag and giving up. It's akin to asking someone about the looks of your blind date and they answer "Oh, she's nice." It’s like what Jerry Seinfeld said about people who wear sweatpants outside of the gym:

“You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’”

A few years ago I lived on Staten Island and I was driving on Richmond Road and this Cadillac cut me off like I wasn’t even there. I had to literally swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid him hitting me. Blinded with anger I chased him down for about 2 miles until he parked at a CVS Pharmacy. The first thing I noticed about him while he slowly got out of his car with the help of a cane was his thick, white orthopedic shoes. It looked like he was actually whistling, oblivious to my rage as he ambled into the pharmacy. Then I noticed his handicapped license plate. All sorts of things were going through my mind at that point: This guy shouldn’t be allowed on the road; he’s gonna kill someone; he’s a crazy person; he’s a menace to safe drivers everywhere…

Then I remembered that famous quote “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his sensible, orthopedic shoes.”

Or something like that.

Life goes fast: you drop your daughter off to her first day of Kindergarten on Monday and on Thursday of the same week you're driving her and her stuff to her college dorm in Savannah, Georgia. "You can do and be anything you wanna be," I tell my children as I put on my brown loafers and return to my hated job on Monday. God gave me a gift that I’m not using and I feel guilty about it. “Stay at your well-paying job,” they tell you. But you know what? Those people telling you that are all dead.

The time’s gonna go by anyway, might as well spend it doing something you love.

As that famous philosopher Bugs Bunny once quipped about life: no one gets out of this alive.

Why did I mention my dream at the beginning? Simply to say this: it could all end at any time. Every day someone wakes up not knowing it will be their last day. And when you’re surrounded around that barn there’s no delaying the inevitable. There is no bargaining with the reaper.

No matter how wicked your shoe game is.