Sneaking Up

I just got an email asking me to rate and review my new sneakers.

The vendor said that, if I did this, I could not only then Twitter and Facebook my review to my legion of friends, but would also be automatically entered in a drawing with a cash prize of $1,000.

In the first place, I am an Old Writer and actually remember the days when writers and reviewers, rather than being “eligible” for a cash prize,actually got paid for their services. In the second place, it takes more than a long shot at a thousand bucks to get me off the couch.

That’s pretty chintzy, I must say, in a day when a grand won’t even buy a pair of sunglasses or a half hour with one of Elliott Spitzer’s companions.

In fact, every time I purchase Aleve at the pharmacy the clerk tells me that, as the 3,632nd customer of the day, I have just been entered in drawing with a cash prize of $10,000. Let me tell you, it is a lot easier to pop pain killers than it is to write reviews.

Raise the stakes to twenty Gs, however, and I am ready to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

In the third place, most of my friends and acquaintances don’t give a rat’s ass if I live or die, never mind concerning themselves with my state of well-being footwear-wise.

All of that being said, however, I like my new puppy palaces. They are still new with that wonderful new sneaker smell, and not the rancid odor of a decomposing swamp creature they take on later.

I don’t buy new sneaks often, but one sign that the time has come is when I have to look for them on the front porch rather than their usual parking place in the middle of the living room floor. Another is when, as we are leaving on an auto trip, my wife suggests that, rather than packing or wearing my sneakers, I might want to bungee them to the roof of the car.

It is also time to re-shoe when walking in them feels like riding in a car with four flat tires. These new guys have so much bounce that I can’t resist breaking out in a few choruses of “The Happy Wanderer” as I schlep to the post office.

I usually only buy new sneakers in the fall or winter because in the spring or summer I quickly forget I have on the new ones and mow the grass in them. Grass stains are a sure fire sneaker killer for me and once they are thus sullied they are never allowed out in public again. A man wearing grass stained sneakers is saying three things: a.) I am too poor to own more than one pair; b.) I mow my own grass because I can’t afford to hire illegal aliens to do it for me; c.) I use a walk behind mower because my yard isn’t big enough to use a tractor. All of these things, if nothing else, brand you as a Democrat at a time when it probably isn’t safe to be one.

So, I am not going to take the vendor up on his offer to review my shoes. I have better things to do than write about sneakers.