Today I returned some shoes to a place where people buy recreational items (I can’t tell you more because they might trace this). I bought the shoes yesterday after trying them on briefly and stepping on the fake rock in the footwear department (this may or may not be a real clue as to what store it was…but I’ll also tell you this: there are a lot of white people there and, in fact, you’ll never feel whiter than the day you drive up to this place in a Prius).
When I got home it was time to walk to the library with my family for a magic show. I put on my new shoes and walked. As I went down the stairs, my toes hurt. Oh no, I thought, I got the wrong size. Then I thought, yeah, but you’re going down a hill. That’s like trying to check how much gas you have when all the gas is sloshing to the front of the tank. Wait ’til you get to the sidewalk and walk a bit. So I did. They still felt cramped. I walked to the library and back. They maybe felt a bit better.
Still, today I brought them back to this recreational type store to check out the next size up. They were holding them for me in Customer Service. I compared the two and found the larger size was a good fit. I brought yesterday’s shoes back to the woman at the counter. She said, “Did you wear these out of the house?”
See, this is where the tension enters the story. You have to imagine me standing there in this store and this woman wearing a green vest is standing there looking at me. To my right is a big canoe. (These are not necessarily real details).
As I say, “No,” she turns over the shoes. On the bottom we find some gooey thing with pine needles sticking out of it and whatnot. I mumble, “I just put them on and walked around inside the house.” I could have added, “The house is really dirty right now,” but I was too embarrassed to think clearly. Instead, I just stared at the bottom of yesterday’s shoes. What the hell was that gooey thing?
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her green vest flapping pleasantly as she flipped the shoes back over. She handed me a receipt and I thanked her. Then I slunk out of the store.
I wonder how many steps you are allowed to take in a pair of shoes before they become irrevocably yours? And, more importantly, did I overstep?
Not to worry. I’m pretty sure that said white-person-frequented outdoor goods store takes absolutely anything back. I have a friend who routinely returns stuff that she has used for a year or two. They only ask if you wore them outside so they can decide whether to put it back with the new stuff or to sell it with the used gear sale they do once a month. These procedural details, of course, do nothing to answer the more philosophical question that you have posed here.
This really made me laugh out loud, Evan, especially paragraph 5! I found your blog when I was looking for the DWI 2009 website to see who actually attended so I wouldn’t have to bother you about getting that info.