free opinions!

I don't have any sneakers. No, that's not right, I have lots of sneakers. I have red ones with blue stripes and blue ones with white stripes and black ones with bleach spots. What I mean is that while I have several pairs of sneakers, I don't really have anything I can go running in or play basketball in or any other kind of sporting thing that I don't do regularly but might if I had some shoes in which to do them.

I don't have any athletic shoes. Well, that's not true either. I have a pair of Adidas, white with some purplish-blueish design on them that I got when I was in high school and I played volleyball. But they're kinda old, and maybe my tastes have changed a bit. What I mean is that I don't really have any athletic shoes that I like to wear.

I wanted some new athletic shoes. That is true.

Last night, Rob and I went athletic shoe shopping. Last night was not to be confused with last week, which was when Rob and I went dress shoe shopping. Rob likes to take girls shopping because girls can tell him what looks good and what does not. He has a gay man friend who supposedly has great taste, but since Rob's target audience is girls and not gay men, he brings a girl. He often even promises to buy the girl something in exchange for her opinions.

I told Rob it would be silly for him to buy me something in exchange for my opinion, when I am so happy to give it freely and usually without being asked. Plus, I like to shop, and I have no other friends in Winston-Salem. Maybe I should've been buying him something. But no. I also went because I was toying with the idea of buying some shoes myself for reasons covered earlier.

We started at Sears', and really, we should've just stayed there. Every shoe store we perused had essentially the same stock at essentially the same price. We both agreed that there were lots of pairs of shoes that were fine, but nothing that made either one of us say, "Wow, my feet would look sexy in those." There was a pair of lovely suede green New Balances that Rob liked, and of course I enthusiastically approve of all suede shoes; alas, they were women's. I tried hard to convince him that no one would ever be able to tell, but he was convinced the day would come when he would hit on a girl and look down to realize she had the same shoes. There was another pair of some funny-shaped track shoes that Rob liked, but when he tried them on, I looked at him sadly and said, "Sweetie, I just don't think you can pull those off. Frankly, I don't know anyone who can. I'm sorry." He sighed, and said, "It's okay. That's why you're here."

Finally, it was back to Sears'. He tried on a pair of men's Nikes, and I tried on a pair of men's Nikes. Then we switched; Rob and I wear the same shoe size. I decided to buy my pair after much walking with one of them on and checking myself out in the feet mirror with my pants rolled up to see if they had a slimming effect on my calf. Rob decided to buy his, took them off, tried mine on, decided to buy mine, then tried his on again and decided to buy them so we wouldn't have the same pair of shoes. I suggested both of us each wearing one of each shoe, but Rob has an amazing ability to completely tune me out when I make suggestions.

We walked out of Sears' with matching bags containing matching boxes containing non-matching shoes in matching sizes. And that's the truth.