So Hard To Say Goodbye

I think it is time to retire my Teva flip flops.

They smell really really bad.

I've tried to give them up time and time again, but I just can't do it. Other than the fact that they are THE MOST comfortable shoes/sandals/flips/flops* that I've ever owned, we've just been through so much together. They are my trusty fallbacks.

I purchased them at Galyan's in Lenox Marketplace while living in Atlanta in the summer of '03, shortly before a trip to Tennessee for the notorious music festival Bonnaroo.

There, in the lost farmland of eastern Tennessee, they saw it all, my new, innocent little pedalers. Most of all, they survived what became known throughout the crowd of 80,000 plus as the "flip flop graveyard." It was a giant sinking pit of gooey mud that increased in size and intensity each day as spectators' feet slurped through it's mucky depths.

Of course there was some residue - dried mud at the least - left on my sandals.

Then there were various river trips, trips to the beach, the attack of a particular doglet's revenge after being left alone - tooth marks forever reminding me of that look - the "I-can't-believe-you-left-me-here-alone and I've-done-something-really-bad" look, the many stepping-in-gum incidents, and so on.

With the mud, the canine punctures, the gum - I've held on strong. My shoes, they have character, I've told myself.

But there's the smell. The smell has been gradually building up over all this time. And now, my friends, now I believe its finally gotten bad enough for me to really consider saying goodbye.

Sigh.

*I have a pair of twin friends, they are boys, they are age 26. One of them calls these particular type of sandals "flips" and the other one calls them "flops."