Running into me

I have been thinking about shoes. Not in an Imelda Marcos sort of way – I don’t collect shoes, although I do sometimes neglect to throw them away until kindly prompted.

No, I have been thinking about shoes. As distinct from trainers – or what my North American friends call sneakers. Every since I had the operation on my knee, I have been wearing trainers. Just because they offer the best grip in a village where almost everything is either up or down but almost never on the level. So my two pairs of trainers – one for best you understand – have become a symbol of my lameness.

It never used to be like that. At one time I had trainers because I went running, usually early in the morning, through the dark and empty streets and into the park – sometimes across the river under its duvet of morning mist and sometimes up the hard hill in preparation for the race.

I ran my first organised 10k at the age of 52 and two years later ran my one and only half marathon. I am pleased to note that my time was less than seven minutes slower than the world record time Patrick Makau set last Sunday in Berlin. Granted he ran a marathon in roughly the time that I ran a half marathon, but he is young and probably trained harder than I did.

My trainers then were shoes for going, not halting.

When I was young, we also had shoes for going, running faster than the wind. But these were sandals. Every summer there was a new pair of sandals with unsullied white crepe soles and a cut out pattern of holes over the toes that the sun would tattoo on your feet like henna, by the end of the holidays. I can clearly remember the pure joy of running so fast that my heels hit my buttocks in my new wonder shoes, winged like the sandals of Hermes, at the start of an apparently endless summer. Over the next few weeks, the once stiff and new leather became like a second skin - a moulded three dimensional representation of my ever-running feet.

Of course, autumn eventually came and it was time to put away these miraculous shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe, wings folded as they prepared to hibernate. 

There was little time to mourn the passing of summer as it was now time for New Shoes for the new school year. These were usually bought half a size or so larger than the fluorescing green outline of my foot in the pedoscope indicated, sometimes with consequences.

Early one March in the first year of my first school, I was running around the playground with that inexhaustible perpetual motion of a five year old and my feet had not entirely grown into the extra space allowed. I crashed to earth and skidded – on my knees as was the norm – collecting a good portion of schoolyard gravel on the way. There was impressive grazing soon followed by an appropriate amount of blood.

“Miss” was on playground duty that day. Of course all the teachers were called ‘Miss’, but you should understand that this was “Miss”. Our “Miss”, my teacher from my class. THE “Miss”. The fount of all knowledge and kindness. In memory she was always dressed in sunny summer frocks and always smiling. Of course, I was totally in love with her. She swooped across the playground and lifted me to my feet. One glance was enough for her. She held my hand and led me to the first aid room.

Now, here was a problem. I was a proud boy and even though my shoes were big enough to take the blame, I was determined not to cry in the presence – the exclusive presence – of my adored “Miss”. My plan was simple. If I held my breath, I would not be able to cry.

With my breath firmly clenched I suffered in silence as the stinging Dettol was dabbed on with handfuls of cotton wool. Then lint and plaster – the badge of a wounded playground warrior – and finally she was done. My breath still held – despite the stinging in my knees and the ringing in my ears.

“Miss” looked at me with that smile: “you are a brave boy, how old are you?”

Nothing for it. Let the air out fast and grab a quick breath in, “six next Wednesday, Miss”. And I turned and fled before my eyes let me down as badly as the shoes had done.

Well, spring turned to summer following a pattern I was beginning to see as normal. By now, the school shoes were a perfect fit, if not a touch tight. The first hot day, I went to find my sandals.

I remembered them as my great co-conspirators of the last summer. But something was wrong. They looked older and more worn, tired perhaps and smaller than I remembered them. 

It was a sad feeling and one I was to encounter again many years later when I dropped in unexpectedly to visit my parents.

I dusted off the sandals – regretting that I had not done as I had been told and polished them properly last September – trying to recapture the spirit of our mad Summer dashes. But to no avail. 

They would not be young again. I held them, but the betrayal was complete: I had outgrown them.

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