the shoe chooses you

Nick and I both needed new gym shoes. Besides being too small for him, and full of holes, they have no arch support whatsoever and it seems that his arches are collapsing. Time for new school shoes. Up until now I've gotten away with spending $30 or less on his shoes, but that probably explains why they are falling apart and his feet hurt.

And I needed new shoes cause I lost mine. I know, you're thinking, "How does a grown woman lose her shoes? Didn't you grow out of that when you were like six?" And yes, I am still guilty of taking them off and just leaving them wherever I happen to be, but they are really, really lost this time. Like I think they accidentally got shipped off to Goodwill with the last giant carload of stuff when we cleaned out the closets.

Anyways, there's that scene in the first Harry Potter book when Harry first steps into Ollivander's wand shop, and the magical tape starts measuring him, and Ollivander grabs a box with a wand in it, and has Harry try it, and they go through several magical wands until they find just the right one, because you don't choose the wand, the wand chooses you.

I felt kinda like that today. In a regular shoe store you go in, narrow down what kind of shoe you want by what you are going to be doing in it (running, walking, etc), pick out a shoe that catches your eye, then send the underpaid worker bee back to get your shoe. You make all the decisions.
Unless of course you go to Run AZ, and there the shoe chooses you. (I usually steer clear of product endorsement kind of posts, unless of course it's a book or movie or music or food or something I really love or I can relate it to a book or movie or music or food- like in this case both a book and a movie.)

So you walk in and although they have a wall of shoes, you don't get to pick. Instead of an old wizard, a young athletic-type worker-bee asks you what you will be doing in the shoes (running, walking, etc) and what size you think you are, then you have to roll up your pants and walk around in your socks so they can watch you walk. Then they scurry on to the back room and bring you a pair. "Try it out. Let me watch you run. Nope. Not those. Try these. Not those either. Hmmmm. What about these? Now run with a different one on each foot." They watch you walk, and watch you run, and ask questions until they narrow down the perfect pair. Color, name brand, and price don't even get mentioned. I chuckled to myself as a girl got matched up with a really ugly pair of shoes. "Don't they come in a cuter color?!?!" Nope. They were florescent green. Fortunately both Nick's and my feet seem to like reasonably priced (and in my case -cute) shoes.

Now I have no more excuses. Caramel-palooza is behind me, and I have new shoes, time to get my sorry-I-gained-all-my-weight-back-butt back in gear.