At college, I met people who actually used sneakers for running. The campus uniform seemed to be perfectly-faded Levis and New Balance sneakers. I thought New Balance was a diet when I first heard it.
After endless, mile-long walks in Converse sneakers that gave me blisters, my friends intervened. They knew how to wear sneakers as gracefully as heels. Gradually, they trained me to buy sneakers that were comfortable and attractive, a new concept for me. And, eventually, I used my footwear on both errands and the treadmill.
They gave me some guidelines. No chalk-white aerobic shoes. Florescent stripes were better for construction workers. Only grandparents could wear black leather sneakers. And Velcro straps were really only for fourth graders.
They suited me up. The first official pair of cool running shoes I bought took up half my suitcase. They were Nike Airs, white leather with a purple swoosh and royal blue laces. They slipped on like Speedo socks with transparent, gel-like ping-pong balls in the heel for support. In them, I once made a record run of thirty-four minutes.
These sneakers stayed with me for years. My friends told me I was supposed to change running shoes every couple hundred miles. But choosing a new pair of shoes exhausted me more than reaching the hundred-mile mark. So I wore them until their laces frayed and their colors faded.
One year, I threw them into my carry-on for a spring vacation to the Bahamas. Four miles long and three miles wide, the tropical island boasted a shimmering beach of pink coral specks in its silky sand. Magnificent in its vast emptiness and natural beauty, the beach actually inspired me to run.
One late afternoon, after a run on the beach in my traveled shoes, I was pining for a swim. The beach was all mine that night, the day’s sunbathers already at home taking their evening showers. The sun was about to set. The smell of conch fritters sizzling in sunflower oil swept out of nearby restaurants. I left my sneakers and running clothes next to my towel and raced into the water in my bathing suit. In the company of the whispering palm trees and the faint reggae music from the nearby beach bar, I swam for a half hour, washing away all of my superficial anxieties.
I turned the palms of my hands to the sky and noticed my prune-like fingertips. I walked back to my towel and wrapped myself in it. I looked down at my feet to admire my tan toes. Next to them were my running clothes. But my sneakers were gone.
I spun around in a confused circle, thinking I had been alone on the beach. About a half-mile away, I saw a Bahamian walking in his school uniform with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
I ran towards him, barefoot and in my bathing suit. I noticed his footprints in the sand, and the imprint of the Reebok sneakers he was wearing. About a size 10, like me. He was tall, like me. Looked like he could have been a potential basketball player, like me. I caught up to him and stopped running. He kept walking, but picked up his pace a bit, sensing my presence. I saw a shoelace dangling out of his bulky backpack with a frayed tip awfully similar to my own.
“Hey, you seen a pair of sneakers around here?” I asked him.
“Nope, haven’t seen any Nikes,” he said. The whites of his eyes grew wide the moment he identified the brand of my missing shoe.
“You sure?” I pressed. “Looks like you might have a pair in your bag.”
“Yeah, could be. But I haven’t seen any around here,” he said.
“Show me what you’ve got,” I demanded.
He stood still. He grimaced slightly, as if he were about to the reveal the punch line of a joke. He unzipped his backpack and, reluctantly, pulled out my sneakers.
“Those are mine,” I said. “And you know it.”
He shrugged his shoulders and cast his eyes on his own sneakers. With grey laces and scuffed toes, they were dirty, dusty, and probably hand-me-downs. My Nikes glittered like diamonds next to his Reeboks.
“You shouldn’t go around stealing you know,” I declared in a huff, and tore them from his dirty fingernails. I turned around, and walked back to my clothes with my sneakers in hand.
The walk home, through the main town of the island, looked different at dusk, and offered a gloomy contrast to the simplistic beauty of the beach. It was hard to imagine that only steps from a hotel that sold a twelve-dollar Pina Colada stood crumbling shacks with outhouses. Barefoot children in ripped clothes leaped over rusty auto parts and roaming roosters in front yards. The school basketball court was a sandy field with scattered dandelions and a hoop made of fishing net. A young teenager dribbled a lumpy basketball in desperate need of a bike pump.
I started imagining how my friends would laugh at my determination to recuperate my fabled shoes. But something about my ruthlessness made me not want to tell anyone about it.
He had stolen from me. Yet I felt as if I had stolen back my sense of greed from him. His stealing, ultimately, made me feel greedy. I had reclaimed something I could have easily done without, too consumed by his having stolen to think of his needs.
I never even wore the sneakers much afterwards, feeling I didn’t really deserve them. I’m better off running barefoot on the beach anyway. And, frankly, I’ve always preferred flats.
