An All-Star Tribute

Do you ever find yourself waxing nostalgic? I wouldn’t say I do it often, but sometimes I find that special something to get sentimental about. This time it happened to be a pair of shoes.


I was watching the Sesame Street DVD “Happy Healthy Monsters” with Lij the other day and one of the little kids on the show was wearing a pair of pink high-top Converse All-Stars. I myself once had a pair. Seeing the shoes didn’t start my weeping or anything like that. But it did prompt a fun little trip down memory lane.


The pair of sneakers I had before my All-Stars were reminiscent of Punky Brewster’s shoes. They were bright red high tops, with laces halfway up and then two strips of Velcro at the top. They were COOL shoes. Along with my jelly shoes, I wore them until they fell apart.


When we went to get replacement sneakers I remember going to an actual shoe store. Our family was not into buying “name brands.” Store brands worked just fine for us and cheap store brands were even better. But for some reason, this time we went to a real shoe store with real brand name shoes. Maybe it was because my feet had stopped growing a size a month. Maybe it was because my parents thought a name brand shoe would last longer. I may never know. But in we went. And out we came with my pair of pink high-top Converse All-Stars. Unfortunately, I never got to find out if they would have lasted longer.


I wore my shoes to school everyday. But shortly after buying them there was a mishap in art class that forced my pink high-top Converse All-Stars into retirement as after-school play shoes.


We were constructing paper mache creatures in art class. I was building a winged unicorn. We had gotten to the painting part of the project and (as everyone knows) winged unicorns have yellow horns. I went to retrieve the yellow paint from the shelf. Sadly, the last person to use yellow hadn’t screwed the lid on tightly. The jar of paint fell, breaking all over the floor and splattering yellow paint all over my pink high-top Converse All-Stars. I was crushed.


What was worse, my art teacher yelled at me for making the mess. I had to clean up the paint (not really that unfair) and she gave me no pity for my ruined shoes and refused to let me use yellow paint for the rest of the year. I was forced to paint the winged unicorn’s horn blue.


However sad that story might seem, I think I successfully escaped without any permanent scaring. After all, I went on to become an art teacher myself. And in high school I bought another pair of Converse All-Stars (this time dark green and not high-tops).


Still, when I saw those perfectly pink sneakers on the television, I couldn’t help but think back to the last time I saw my pair – stained with yellow paint and covered with mud sitting out on our back porch, waiting to be taken on another adventure. Somehow, I don’t think those shoes minded much. I’m sure they had more fun in the backyard than they would have in school anyway.