Friday, June 08, 2007

Leather

My shoelace broke today at work. At lunch I stop at a corner market to buy a new pair. I ask the clerk if she sells shoe laces and she says yeah and directs me down isle three. There they are, and to my surprise there are a variety of styles to choose from. There's a pair of laces for $2.19. Just what I need, but next to them is a pair of hardy leather laces oozing with ruggedness. They're tagged at $4.49. More than double the price. I had the adequate laces in one hand and the manly laces in the other. I pay double for the lumberjack laces as a treat to myself.

I get out to the truck and my partner sees the laces and comments on how hardcore they are. You bet they are. I even say the word extravagant out loud to describe them. I'm really excited, no kidding. I've got one boot tied up real snug and I feel as if I could hike Mt. Rainier--or, get in a knife fight in loose gravel. Beaming, that's what I am. The laces in the other boot aren't broken but I take out my clippers and cut 'em off anyway. I don't even bother untying them. They're weak, old. I start threading the second boot up with the leather straps and my partners watching me, grazing on his sandwich and cheese crackers. I get the lace through the second eye and give a firm tug. The strap, the leather man-lace rips! "You've got to be kidding me!" I scream. My partner laughs at me. He's crying with laughter. I'm crushed. $4.49. Down the toilet.

I head back into the market still with only one boot laced up.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha you have me crying with laughter as well!

Man-lace indeed!

April said...

Arrgh, eh?
That sounds kindof like the disposable camera I purchased (extra $ for a cheap-o type of zoom feature on it, of course)in order to take photos of my students looking cute in their costumes for the play...and then forgot/ran out of time to take pictures. So it sits on my coffee table, all 27 exposures waiting, mocking me.
Is this an example of frivolity, I wonder? :-)

Anonymous said...

Thats what one of the funniest things I've ever read.