With my new shoes I no longer make a squeaking, kissing sound every other stpe I take across a linoleum or non-carpeted floor. I am proud of my stature. I no longer sound like a poorie who has not enough money to buy new shoes when the shoes I was wearing had large and potentially daangerous holes on bottom. Only one shoe squeaked, though. And I could mute the squeak by curbing my steps ever so invisibly. It was uncomfortable in its way but it worked. It prevented me from sounding like a ruffian, a guttersnipe, a vagrant who cannot afford new shoes.
Funny thing, though. I just heard someone else who works hear making the same sounds I was making before I got these phat new un-holey shoes. He was squaeking like a freakin’ bird of some species I am too ignorant to name as a dazzling rhetorical flourish. This person’s shoes, which I think were white tennis shoes, I didn’t get a look, produce the signature sound of shoes that need replacing, or at least some kind of maintenance. Do I label him, in my mind, any of the names I assigned to myself? Is he a poorie, a hooligan, a roughneck? He seems nice enough. You can be all these things while maintaining decency of character, of course. But when I experienced my shoe-kissed steps through these hallways I felt conspicuous. I felt looked at, and contemplated, and demeaned as a lesser specimen among my peers.
