Earth shoes pt. 1

After a gloriously sunny day of hanging out at the student union, window shopping and pretending we were university students, SW and I headed to the parking garage to get into her family’s, bulbous late model station wagon and drive home. We began to climb the concrete stairs in the parking garage to the third level where the car was parked. SW, who favored baggy, brightly colored overalls, had her pant legs rolled into cuffs at least five inches above her ankles, in order to show off her striped socks and tan earth shoes.

Earth shoes were boxy leather shoes designed by a Scandinavian person and the soles of the shoes mimicked sand on the beach—so your heel would always be lower than the rest of your foot resulting in better posture and extra calorie burning with every step. They resembled shoe boxes on the foot. Since I had large feet, I went through an abbrieviated earth shoe phase, but I was sensitive enough about the size of my large feet and accentuating their hugeness was not worth the hip factor of the shoes. SW had tiny feet and tiny earth shoes were so ugly they looked cute. She carried a huge shoulder bag that was made out of grey wool fabric with a large stripe of rainbow colors

As we headed up the stairs, SW suddenly exclaimed, "I can't move!" At that moment, I bumped into her since I was walking behind her. She kept saying, "I can't move! I can't move!" I saw that her foot was on top of her shoulder bag, which was slung over her shoulder. When she tried to stand up, she couldn't—the shoulder strap of her bag held her down. Her foot was on the bag keeping it on the step, so every time she started to stand up she increased the pressure holding the bag to the floor. When I realized this, I started laughing so hard I couldn't talk much less explain or help her stand up. I was paralyzed with laughter--all I could do was point at her foot and gulp air. When I looked at her tiny earth shoe foot on the multi colored wool bag on the dirty, chewing gum encrusted step, I could do nothing but double over again with laughter. The family coming up the stairs behind us was exasperated since we were blocking the stairs. Later, we realized they probably thought we were helplessly high. We managed to flatten ourselves against the stair railing, still laughing hysterically and they were able to get by us. After what seemed like 20 minutes, but I am sure it was less than a minute, SW picked up her foot and took it off her purse and was able to stand up and walk again. We stumbled to the car, still laughing that out of control, sustained gut laugh that makes you choke.

For months after that every time we tried to tell the story to our friends, I would see a mental picture of her little earth shoe foot on her purse and I began helpless, spasms of laughter. We could barely get the story out and when we managed to explain what happened, our usually supportive girl friends would look at us like we were freaks—it didn’t seem funny to anyone but us.

The start of a brief biography

I grew up in the 1960s and was a teenager in the 1970s. The 70s still make me shudder--a bleak, depressing, and kind of hopeless time. After I barely graduated from high school, I worked in a factory for a couple of years. There was no interest, motivation, family encouragement or financial resources for college. When I wanted a change, I moved to Alaska and stayed for 10 years. At first I continued my working, drinking, sleeping around lifestyle.

Eventually, I began to tire of that kind of aimlessness, particularly the drain of working service jobs. I applied for a job at the post office, took the test and months later was called in for orientation. The job would be sitting at a machine that envelopes moved through. The machine operator had a fraction of a second to type in the zip code so the envelope went the correct bin. In order to actually land one of these jobs, the potential operator had to reach a certian level of zip code entry proficiency. The practice sessions were unpaid and even if I passed the data entry test, shift work was sporadic--on an as needed basis.

Driving home from orientation, I had an epiphany about what I wanted to do and it wasn't work at the post office. Interestingly, I was 25 or 26 at the time, and it was the first time I made a conscious decision about the future. Up until then I had operated on the fishing bobber principle--wherever I landed a job that is where I stayed and floated along until circumstances forced me to make a change. I knew several people at the post office and it seemed to be an awful combination of relatively good money (at least, I thought so at the time), and the worst of a random rule-filled, petty, bureaucracy. In my gut I knew I shouldn't go work there. And I didn't. I kept bartending, and started college full-time. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and went through several majors ranging from travel industry management to political science finally settling on cultural geography.

No, I did not graduate promptly. I maintained a modified partying lifestyle, did not always make great grades and in a spectacular flameout after the end of a ridiculous (but at the time it seemed life shattering) affair with a married man, dropped out of school mid semester and left the state for awhile. Within a year, I returned to Alaska, went to the University and begged and groveled my way back into classes and this time I finished.

I am writing a book about people who collect stuff in some kind of organized fashion. I am interested in people who collect specific things and have imposed specific parameters on their collection. I especially interested in people who are passionate about collecting things that don't have a lot of value to the rest of us. For example, vacuum cleaners. A man has created a website about his vacuum cleaner collection. His advice to other vacuum collectors is that an object, in this case a vacuum, is only as valuable as someone else thinks it is--in other words what is someone else willing to pay for your old vacuum or iron. He points out that since there is a very small pool of vacuum collectors, he will not get rich on the proceeds of selling his collection. This is the type of collector I am interested in--not the investor or speculator--but the person who enjoys or finds comfort in the objects they accumulate.

As I write, I am reminded that I have always been interested in what people are doing and why their activities are meaningful to them. This is why I went to grad school. And then I put my interests in stories aside and started doing corporate work. I was using my skills, observing and interviewing people, and trying to translate what I saw into something the client or colleagues wanted. I am terrible at it. I am a terrible powerpoint creator. I am terrible at micro messaging at the slide and bullet point level. Telling a story in the corporate world and telling a (real) story are two different animals. It took me a long time to realize that. So, after my last couple of spectacular stumbles in the corporate world, I get it. I am done trying to do the ppt. schtick. Hopefully, the stories I will tell from now on will be interesting to others.