It's The Circle, The Circle Of Liiiiiife...

Count me as one of those kids who was a sneaker addict growing up. I never had enough disposable income to really go crazy (my parents would buy me 1 pair of sneakers a year whether I really needed them or not, and I would usually save up enough to buy another pair a year on my own), but I made the most with what I had. Weeks’ worth of research (and by “research” I mean pouring over Eastbay catalogues) would go into my decision, and I would keep my shoes in pristine condition. New sneakers rarely got scuffs because I would reserve them for playing ball indoors, but in the event that they did get a blemish they got the royal treatment: bleach, toothpaste, whatever it took to keep them looking new. Eventually though, I would get a new pair and “demote” 1 of my other pairs. I kept such care of my sneakers that they would last for years, but I still had a natural progression which kept me from stockpiling dozens of shoes at once. I usually kept my 2 newest pairs in my office at school. These were my indoor balling shoes. I would keep anywhere from 2 to 4 pairs in my room at home, which were kind of my all-purpose shoes: street shoes, shoes to wear to class, shoes to ball outdoors, etc. Finally, I kept a singular pair of sneakers (my oldest pair at the time) in the garage at home for mowing the lawn and yard work. This pair was usually on its last legs, covered in grass stains and cement, and starting to get a little bit mousey. When I would get that new fresh pair, the lawn-mowing pair would get thrown out, the oldest pair of all-purpose sneakers would become the lawn-mowing pair, and all the way down the line.

That's just beautiful...

The problem is that in the few years since I have moved away from home, this naturally occurring system of checks and balances has disappeared. I don’t have a lawn anymore, and I only play basketball once a week as opposed to 4 or 5 times a week. Also, I used to wear sneakers to class and work 9 out of every 10 days when I was in college. Now that I’m a participant in the daily rat race, I spend the majority of my time wearing dress shoes. So, my sneakers are seeing less wear and tear over every stage of their life cycle. All of that means that I should be buying sneakers less and less often, right? Wrong…I am a sneaker addict after all.

My demand for sneakers may have gone way down over the past 3 or 4 years, but my means for buying them have gone up. While I’m not exactly making bank at my current job, I’m making much more than my $10 an hour college job, and Krissy and I don’t have any kids or a house or anything expensive to pay for yet. And I will say that the frequency at which I buy myself new basketball shoes has gone way down lately. I probably only get 1 pair of new basketball shoes a year now (and my most recent pair was a gift from Krissy…when you’re a sneaker addict trying to quit the habit, it doesn’t help if your wife is an even bigger sneaker addict than you), and seeing as how I don’t play nearly as often as I used to I could probably get away with buying them even less often than that, but I can’t help it being the sneaker addict that I am. However, I used to only buy basketball sneakers because their sole purpose once they came out of the box was to play basketball in them. The purposes of those shoes evolved over time into whatever I needed them to be, but that’s how they all started out. Now, I buy trainers for the gym (prior to that I hadn’t owned a low-top sneaker since elementary school) and sneakers specifically to wear out with a pair of jeans or something as well. So, where I was only acquiring 1 or 2 new pairs of sneakers a year before, it’s probably like 3 or 4 pairs of shoes now. The result of this is a glutton of sneakers everywhere around our apartment. It was time for some population control.

So, when I got rid of my old pair of Iverson’s (the original “The Question”) this morning, it was with a heavy heart. I had contemplated getting rid of them this past summer when I had begun to play ball outdoors with them (they had started to get worn and come unglued in certain spots), but they just weren’t quite worn out enough for me to toss out just yet. I figured eventually a day would come where I would get them so beat up and dirty from hiking in the woods or digging a car out of a mud hole or something random that I could justify it to myself. This past weekend gave me a reason (albeit a weak one) after my friend Mac borrowed them to play ball in after forgetting to bring a pair of shoes of his own. Mac's feet are a good size bigger than mine, and the parts of the toe that were already coming apart looked even more worse for wear afterwards. The shoes had definitely seen better days, but I couldn’t bring myself to simply throw them out, so I dropped them off in 1 of those clothing bins for homeless people. Crisis averted…the shoe circle of life goes on.

Why couldn't they have just stayed like this forever?

Cue Elton John.