Farewell, old friends.

No, not you, my loyal readers. (I’m not sure if I can technically call you readers, since there hasn’t been much to read lately. Perhaps I can call you loyal blog-checkers until I can get my post rate back up.) So, no, not farewell to you. I’m not ready to officially abandon the blog just yet.

Farewell instead to my old friends, the adidas Response Trail Runner tennis shoes that I bought shortly before I graduated from high school. That’s right, high school. I bought these shoes about a week or so before my graduation.

I was not really a runner, but I wore tennis shoes any day that I wasn’t wearing either my hiking boots or my Birkenstocks, so I took my tennis shoes seriously. (Feel free to laugh; I am.) They were not cheap, but they were awesome, and I would get my money’s worth (you’ll see).

I bought these shoes and was in love with them. They looked cool. They had this integrated tongue thing, so the tongue didn’t go all lopsided and slide down to the arch of your foot. They were so comfortable.

I sent an e-mail (it was the first year I’d used e-mail) to my pseudo-boyfriend (now husband) to tell him that I bought these awesome new shoes. He thought they were so cool that he bought a pair himself.

I wore them on Fridays to my summer job at the Sheriff’s Department. They went with me to crime scenes and on drug searches.

I took these shoes to college in sunny Florida. They went with me to class. They went with me to work my freshman year. My job pretty much involved walking all over campus for six hours at a time, four nights a week. The shoes and I got lots of exercise.

It turned out that sunny Florida was also rainy Florida, so these shoes got flooded quite a few times. Shoes start to stink after they get soaked and aren’t allowed to dry out completely. Eventually I had to give in and buy new shoes. I bought another pair of adidas Response Trail shoes the next year. These were the new generation, an updated version.

I couldn’t bear to throw out my originals, though. They got a special place in my closet. They still went to college with me every year. I wore them on rainy days. Then they went to graduate school with me. I got my first real job and I didn’t throw them away. I quit my first real job and moved back home for two months to plan my wedding. The shoes went back home with me.

I got married and moved to another state. The shoes moved, too. They helped me paint my living room; they got speckled with a bit of color (Stone Manor) here and there. They helped me work in my new yard. We both got pretty dirty.

By this time, they had definitely seen better days. They were ten years old, after all. They were even too old to stink. I’d gone through plenty of other pairs of tennis shoes in the time since I’d first bought these. I had even bought the tenth generation adidas Response Trail shoe. But I still couldn’t bear to throw out my originals. They were in such bad shape that they were no longer allowed in the house. They waited for me in the garage, though, waiting to join me on my next adventure.

That adventure happened to be The Great Deck Staining

of 2008. We stripped and power washed the deck, getting ready to stain it. It turned out that deck stripper was a tough opponent for twelve-year-old shoes that had very nearly been worn to death. The result? Separation of the sole.

Would you believe that I still didn’t throw them out? They sat in the garage for another year. My adidas Response Trail 10s took their place as my yard work shoes, but the originals held their place in the garage.

Until now. More than thirteen years after buying them, I finally feel okay about throwing them away, which is what I’ve done. But any shoe that sticks with you for thirteen years deserves a little memorial, don’t you think?

Farewell, old friends. I hope you don’t mind that I wore you to death. Thanks for helping me put one foot in front of the other.