I guess I'm a blogger now

“Er sieht so dumm aus!” Yes, thank you random German kid. Never before had I been to Europe, and never before had a complete stranger called me out for the way I dressed. It was my first time traveling abroad. I was only 16, and like any high school kid I thought I knew everything there is to know about life and the rest of the world. I was a scrawny little kid who dressed like a skater with an ego so big it had to be unhealthy. When the odd teenage German boy blatantly expressed his opinion to everyone on the subway that I looked stupid in my cargo shorts and Billabong t-shirt, he was probably right. But there was no way in hell he was talking about my bright, neon green, Nike 6.0s. I don’t care how many people think Europeans have the trendiest styles, but when a kid wearing capris and a faux hawk called the 16 year old me dumb, I nearly lost it. Of course I wasn’t going to confront the kid, but in my head it was like an explosion of dumbfoundedness.

I have to be honest; I have an obsession with shoes. I don’t know why but for some reason I like them, a lot. Currently I have somewhere around 15 pairs of shoes, 3 of which I have bought within the last month. But of all the shoes I have bought between now and that moment three years ago when the fruity German insulted my style, none are as awesome as the neon green Nike’s I used to wear.

I didn’t realize it at the time but walking around Europe in a pair of neon shoes probably looked really weird, but I loved it. I knew I looked like an American tourist but I didn’t care. All I cared about was how awesome my shoes were. Not two days before I left for the trip I had bought the legendary leather low-tops at a skate shop for the sole purpose of wearing them everywhere. All across Europe I wore them to fancy restaurants, climbing around castle ruins, and even to a German formal for a high school in Hannover. They were my trademark. Or so I thought.

Upon returning to the United States I continued to wear these shoes until I had ripped holes in both the right and left foot. I even got to write a short paper about them in my high school English class. I was elated when my teacher told us we had an assignment to write about our shoes and what they meant to us. But that’s not even the best part. Two years after I had roamed the European countryside in my vibrant sneakers, I was visiting my girlfriend at the time, in Pittsburgh. By this point I had already thrown out the old shoes, when out of nowhere on a sales rack in Journey I saw the exact same pair. They were the same tan leather, they had the same drawn out green swoosh on the side, they were even already laced up with the neon green laces to match. It was too perfect. I nearly knocked my girlfriend over when I saw them. In less than two minutes I was walking out the store with the shoes in hand. And as I sit here writing this right now, the same pair of shoes are sitting on the floor behind me. They may not carry the same sentimental value as the original pair I took with me half way across the globe, but they’re still pretty damn sweet.