The boots the boot

Hiking boots are predominately designed for people without pinky toes. Unfortunately that is one body modification I have not undertaken yet: I even still have my appendix and the least pain in my abdomen is a terror to me since I am rarely adequately insured. For similar reasons it would be cheaper to give the boots the boot than that to the toes, and so I returned to the store, secure with box and receipt, and leaned my bike against the counter. (If you must ask, my bike was a bit upset that we would not be cycling to Whakapapa due to the exchange, and fears of Highway One. The bicycle was not afraid: it has never been. It has always just wanted to go, and there it had to wait wondering what parts would be removed to facilitate its alternate transport.)

"There's just one problem, mate," the cashier said, "these are worn, I can't sell these as new boots." I feared as much. I had nightmares about it, and the oracle when I visited had pronounced the fate: even my fortune cookies recently have been less than positive. "I'm sorry, mate," he said, and I looked into his eyes and he was very, very sorry. But there was nothing I could do, I had to drop the boots.

Oh it would have been so easy! Did I neglect to listen to my toes on that fateful day when I tried on every shoe in the shop? Was I too concerned with vague comparisons with every other boot, the fit in thumb toe in heel, the grip, the secure feeling of a shoe about the ankle? I told him it was my fault, not his, but he just frowned his eyes. He was so disappointed.

The cashier was disappointed, my bike was disappointed, even I was disappointed. When I walked out among the crowds that day there was just that vague sense of disapproval, not of me, but of my purchase; they expected so much more of me. A pigeon looked at me briefly then averted its gaze, shaking it head o slightly. The green man on the walk sign had a bit less spring in his step, and the clouds hung in the sky a meter lower than the day before.

I had not only failed myself, but generations and generations before me. My grandparents expected more of me; their grandparents more as well. My teachers, laboring every school day and night to educate me, for this one moment when I might have to purchase boots, and to purchase the correct pair; that had all been in vain. If only I could go back and buy the half-size larger, even though I had never needed a size 10 1/2 before and even now the thought of it makes me think I must have enormou, clown-like feet! If only my predecessors and teachers could go back and correct that little blind spot in the manner of boot-buying, perhaps all would be a bit better: more smiles on motorists faces and less honking, and the baby on the corner might have one less tear on its face.

President Obama and Queen Elizabeth II were both disappointed in me. Christ, hanging on the cross, bore that exact thorn or nail corresponding to my mis-purchase. My friends were disappointed; my co-workers were. The readers of my blog were disappointed. I was disappointed; my bike was; the cashier was. I've said that. The cow that provided the leather was disappointed. VISA was disappointed. Every boot suit to fit was disappointed, and every foot that would have fit the boot was disappointed as well. It is hard to get the scale of it: Stalin was disappointed, Napoleon was disappointed, Saddam Hussein was disappointed. I disappointed the King: Elvis. So much had gone wrong when I bought the boot, and then worn it, not on carpet in the hostel but on hot tracks through the woods.

I sold the boots into the rental fleet at a reduced price. I escaped to the other side of town and bought boots: big boots -- boots that fit. I hid and fled town on the Naked Bus, and talked to a woman who had not yet learned of my mistake.