#77: The ‘Converse’ Trainers
Take a walk in my shoes.
I often forget just how many pairs of shoes I own, until it comes to packing to go away and I find that I can’t fit them all in one bag. Or is that just me?
We need shoes everyday, and for fashion purposes, we ‘need’ more than one pair. Yet while I have a varied selection to choose from, my go-to pair are those above, the cheap knock-off ‘converses’.
Shoes are one of those everyday objects that we all have. They are practical objects, protecting our feet as we travel. I do love going barefoot, and in the past I used to walk home barefoot from school in my village if it was a super hot day, my shoes in my hand instead of on my feet. But as fun as this may be, it is not practical for my everyday life when I want to leave the house.
For shoes take us places. Eleanor’s high-heels take her to parties (hopefully aided by a taxi), and my trainers take me all over in my day-to-day life of lectures and studying. Yesterday, however, they aided my escape into the countryside, part of my revision break as exams loom upon us here in Durham. In between a few hours of revision, I slipped on these trainers, tied my laces, and took off into the fields just 5 minutes from my student house, where I discovered this stunning view:
It was a beautiful, sunny, Sunday afternoon, and I was trying to enjoy what little I could of my day of rest. So I traipsed across fields and up and down a hill, all the while with my feet protected, safe inside my simple trainers.
But what, apart from practicality, do we associate with shoes? Fashion, of course. Adding to our height while highlighting our figure in high-heels. We can think of climbing mountains in sturdy hiking boots, strolling along the beach in flimsy flip-flops. After a night out we may slip off those heels and replace them with pumps, sighing into a more comfortable shoe. But apart from the many types and their associated uses, do shoes mean anything to us? Apparently, they do.
There’s that old nursery rhyme, ‘There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe’:
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
If that seems a bit violent at the end there, then don’t worry, because Marjorie Ainsworth Decker published a pleasant Christian version of the poem in 1978, with quite the opposite tone:
There was an old woman
Who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children,
And loved them all, too.
She said, “Thank you Lord Jesus,
For sending them bread.”
Then kissed them all gladly
and sent them to bed.
Who knows what the original version meant, though it has been suggested that it actually refers to King George II and his MPs.
What else is there about shoes? In Wizard of Oz it is the shoes which take Dorothy home (whether they be red or silver), in Cinderella everything rests on that single glass slipper. As they say, ‘if the shoe fits’… There’s even a film, The Man With One Red Shoe starring Tom Hanks, which revolves around an unsuspecting man who is singled out by the CIA because he wears odd shoes to the airport.
The references and meanings behind shoes continues. Did you know that there’s a connection between shoes and fertility? This is the reason why newly-wed couples often tie a pair of shoes on the back of their car after a wedding. Who knew?
The list goes on, but for me and my simple trainers, it is the places they take me which remains in my mind.
