My first pair of Nikes (that I remember)

I don’t know why I was even thinking about this today, but for some reason I found myself thinking about my first pair of Nikes. Now, I am the type of person that can pretty much remember every sneaker I wore, from pre-school to 12th grade and beyond, in order of appearance (or re-appearance thanks to the retro-ing trend), and the specific colorway I had. So, for at least an hour, I scoured the internets to find the colorway I had back in the day (the 80s for you young people), and for the first time in a good while the internets let me down. I could not (and still have not) found the colorway I had…which had me questioning whether I was remembering correctly. Tossing that brief moment of doubt aside, I simply declared that the internets was, at least non-conclusive and at most wrong, about the available colorways back then. But anyway, without further adieu, I present to you the Nike Air Trainer I aka “My first Nikes.”

Like I said, these aren’t the colorway I had…and I also had lows and not mids, but that strap?? That strap was EVERYTHING to me back then. One day I would wear them strapped, the next day unstrapped, and the next day I might take the strap out of the strap loop and wear them like that. Endless fun for a six year old, lol. My pair had red accents and elephant print on a white base.

These are on the right track…just pretty much swap blue for red and also make the Nike on the strap red. I could not find a pic of my colorway anywhere…BUT IT EXISTED, in kid sizes anyway. I wouldn’t mind adding these back into to my collection. I know John Gotty keeps some Air Trainers on deck, so maybe he can help me locate a pair in my size.

These are a Tinker Hatfield creation, btw. If you think about it, Tinker really was batting 1.000 on designs until like 2004, and hasn’t done too bad since then.

I’m off to find some Air Trainers.