Those Shoes have Soul

Several years ago on Bourbon Street in New Orleans a man was saying to people passing by, “For $5, I’ll tell you where you got ‘dem shoes.” Of course, there was no way he knew where people were from, much less where they got their shoes. When someone said, “Sure, I’ll give you $5 dollars to tell me.” He said, “’Dem shoes are right there on the sidewalk!” Then, he strutted off with a pocketful of money.

It is an interesting thought process to think about the places that my tennis shoes have been. The list may look something like this:

·      South Carolina

·      Pennsylvania

·      West Virginia

·      Oregon

·      Utah

·      Colorado

·      California

·      Nevada

·      New Jersey

In each of those states my shoes took hikes, walks, worked out in gyms, shopped and rode a bicycle. Sometimes they even went to a movie theatre or into a restaurant.

A Nike shoe advertisement says, “You gave your shoes a soul. Now give them another life.” Their recycle program takes old tennis shoes and creates a new material, which is used to make high-quality sports surfaces including courts, turf fields, tracks and more.

Today's gift was to take my tennis shoes, and the memories attached to them to the local running store. The soul of my shoes will now create new memories for those who put their soles on the sports surfaces.

In Giving,

Robin