I saw my old brown dress shoes and they spoke to me. They were dusty. They had been hanging out in the shoe holder on the back of my door. They were more than ten years old, but they were good shoes. They were the oldest shoes I had. But they still fit. I laced up my old brown shoes. It was time to go.
My mother and I drove to the symphony building, an old high school building in Annapolis, Maryland. We parked the car in the big parking lot and walked toward the building. My shoes felt more comfortable than I remembered, as if there was more cushioning or something.
When I got to the sidewalk by the old brick building, I noticed that a few little rocks had stuck to the bottoms of my shoes. When you're walking on a smooth hard surface, little things that are stuck to your soles tend to stand out. I heard the scraping, stopped, looked shoeward, and pulled off some of the little rocks. My mother saw me. I said, "I guess there's something sticky on here from a long time ago." You see, I hadn't worn the shoes in years.
We went inside, got some coffee, drank it, then got ready to go into the big room where the symphony was warming up. Like a good concertgoer, I made use of the bathroom before taking my seat. It was then I noticed the problem. The soles of my old shoes were falling apart. Little chunks of old rubber had broken off. I saw them on the bathroom floor. I locked myself in a stall and looked at my soles. They looked like shit, full of parking lot pebbles and dust and dirt, and also around they edges they were breaking. Little chunks of rubber broke off like little brown icebergs. Okay, I thought, I'll just have to walk carefully.
I walked as easy as I could. I tried not to bend my soles. This was hard. You bend your soles a lot when you walk. I walked slow and easy--a floating shuffle step. The area by the auditorium doors was all crowded. Good cover. I casually looked down. Little brown rubber chunks on the old granite floor. I smiled. It was funny. But I also felt a little self conscious. My big fear was that someone would see my shoes and the rubber chunks and call me out. I was not in a crowd of drunken rock and rollers. Classical music fans are usually pretty sharp. Did they see me? Did they notice? Was anyone following the bread crumbs my shoes were leaving?
Instead of the main isle, I took the side isle. I walked to my seat with cool confidence. It's the best way anyway. Once I was seated, I was safe. Of course I had to explain my old shoe breakdown blues to my mother. Luckily no one was sitting right next to us. I took off a shoe and showed her. They sole looked even worse, with big cracks and crevasses and jagged rubber edges.
The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra started playing. I tried to enjoy the music, but my mind was going wild about my old shoes. The shoes themselves provided some craziness, but there was also the walking. Challenges walking, walking blues. I felt trapped. I felt trapped in a crazy kind of way. When your shoes fall apart at the symphony, you can't really walk around in stocking feet. I looked down. I enjoyed the music, but it was impossible to turn off the flow of thoughts in my mind. The craziness had found me. I was in my own story. But what would happen?
The big work that night was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor. I dug this piece, and the soloist was good, of course (you don't become a touring soloist unless you got it), but my mind kept going back to my shoes. I had taken my feet out of the shoes. My theory was that they heat from my feet was warming up the rubber and facilitating the breakdown.
I heard the music. I watched the musicians. All their shoes looked so good. All black and shinny under the bright lights above the stage. When the music got wild and crazy, it seemed to be soundtracking right along with my mind. A tightness was building in my bladder. I was contemplating one word at this point: intermission. I had to walk to the bathroom. And I had to wear my shoes. But my shoes were getting worse. My big fear was that the whole sole would just cleave off, and someone would notice and call me out. Because how do you hide from your shoes?
Intermission time came, and I took the less-traveled side isle (right by the auditorium wall), and only a few chunks fell. The floor of the auditorium was carpeted. I left a few chunks. Then I left a few more chunks in the hallways and the bathroom, where I checked my soles again. The crevasses were getting bigger. The broken off chunks were getting bigger too.
I slow-walked back to my seat. "It's getting pretty bad," I said to my mother. "Big pieces are falling off now." I decided to pick off the ones that were hanging on. They came off very easy. Some were as big as Matchbox cars. I put these chunks in my program and wrapped them up. Like I said, I was glad no one was sitting next to me. I was sitting near the end of a row, near the wall.
And when the gig was over, I walked out of there and I felt about one inch shorter. I dumped my sole debris in the garbage and walked out of the building without looking back. It was a big relief to be outside. More rocks than ever stuck to my soles in the old parking lot, but everything was fine. I had embraced the craziness of the night. And I was excited to write about it. And my mother and I were laughing about the incident. We talked about the music. Yes, yes, the music was great. The soloist really knew her Mendelssohn. But we kept going back to the shoes. And I was thinking about my footwear in a whole different way.
When I got home, I carefully put the old shoes back in the holder on the back of my door. I might not ever wear them again, but there was a crazy beauty to those shoes, and that was something that was worth saving.
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