Saturday, August 6, 2016

if the shoe fits.

"life is a song, sing it. life is a game, play it. life is a challenge, meet it. life is a dream, realize it. life is a sacrifice, offer it. life is love, enjoy it." satya sai baba. 

the other day my friend leonard, (short for leonardo,) said i'm a 'serial returner.' i barked something unprintable at him, but immediately wanted to take it back. the argument began when i described how i tried to return a pair of basketball shoes to 'the foot locker' and they refused to accept them. the lady said the shoes looked as though i must've worn them outside, a lot, which was utter nonsense. 

ok, within a few moments of the interaction i totally remembered how i had indeed worn the shoes outside. i had put them on before leaving the 'rideau centre' and walked several blocks to my truck, just to see how they felt. obviously i continued wearing the shoes once i got to the gym, during a few half-court and a couple of full-court games. i wore them to a coffee shop after, then all the way home. 

for whatever reason, that had all slipped my mind. it could happen to anyone, but i did not own up to any of it. in fact i dug in, indignantly suggested the store must've sold me a pair of slightly used shoes. i insisted that i only wore them in my living room. to which the girl suggested i needed to clean my house, a comment i found spectacularly out-of-line and i demanded to talk to the manager. she said she was the manager. i said that was extremely bad news for me and, anyway, i soon simply slithered away.

walking around the mall for a while thinking the whole affair over i kinda wanted to go back and apologize to the lady. she had been so kind and patient, even gave me a nice bag to carry the shoes out of the store in. she didn't deserve all that. however, at the same time i also thought how virtually nobody alive today will be around in a hundred years. nobody's gonna remember. so i put my nice semi-new basketball shoes on, threw my old ones away and left the building. 

my logic may have been slightly skewered, as it so often is, although it is true. even sooner than a hundred years, nobody will remember the aging guy with hairy ears who tried to return used kobe bryant basketball shoes. nobody remembers my grandmother, jessie, not even me. there's a plaque in a park at lake wilcox, ontario, stating that the park is dedicated to her memory. yet nobody in that park ever actually remembers her. that's for sure. after i'm gone, nobody will remember my mom, and she's hard to forget.

ernie mahoney got a bench dedicated to him. i sit on it from time to time, but how many people remember ernie? there's a nice lady somewhere around who remembers, and me, but as time marches on fewer and fewer fine folks will remember that great guy. and what about jane, pierre, art, doug, maureen, mary. heck, nobody remembers albert einstein, napoleon bonaparte, lassie, christopher columbus, leonardo (leonard) devinci ... not really. so why worry about fame and fortune (?) why worry about past and future (?) why take ourselves so seriously (?) 

if the truth be told, which is so very often a bad idea, i had hoped new shoes would help me play bball a bit better but blasted-all they didn't. i still had legs without much bounce left in em. my hoofs were still sore afterward. nobody remembers how i used to leap like a bounding cheetah. but i have nice new shoes, and ernie, and pierre, for now. 




No comments :

Post a Comment