Marching Into The Peace Corps, pt 6: An Affair (with my sneakers) To Remember
by I always heard the advice that when you start exercising, you should team up with a buddy so they will pull you into working out. Now they say don’t rely on a buddy because if they don’t work out, you don’t work out. I have two buddies I share my workouts with, but they are far from being traditional friends.
Those shoes have a lot of good memories tied to them, including losing nearly forty pounds in the process. My “adopted” parents in the second country looked at my sneakers and wanted so desperately to get me a new pair. They took me to a shoe store, but they didn’t have my size. I was also sick as a dog that day with the second meanest case of the flu I’ve ever had. In the space of two hours, I went from being perfectly fine to barely able to get out of the car and into bed.
My sneakers are like old friends with wonderful stories to tell. They may be beat up, but they’re still usable. Of course they are drafty and on days when it rains, I’ve got my own private swimming pool between my toes. They are in awful shape, but I’m not ready to surrender them. I’m not sure if I should burn them like a flag, bury them in a marked grave, or at some point, retire them into a box of memories with their story, to gather dust and cobwebs.
For now, they remain my companions despite their obvious flaws partly because of great sentiment, but mostly because I’m broke. Under the old economics of my life, when I started a workout plan, I would go out and buy new sneakers and clothing for the task. This time, I’ve got nothing. My workout clothing consists of jeans with little holes starting around the back pockets, so they get along well with my religious sneakers. I figure I’ll keep wearing this stuff until the holes get so big, the local police will threaten to arrest me for indecent exposure.
There’s another old saying that comes to mind: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”. As I step into the greatest challenges of my life, there is no better pair of sneakers I would want with me. They took me places I never thought I’d go and emboldened me to believe I could go anywhere and do anything.
Fitness magazines always give the same piece of advice: “when you start a work out plan, hook up with a buddy.” I have two buddies on my feet!
If you don’t like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the socyberty.com site.
quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here
socyberty.com articles can be located here
relijournal.com articles are here
picable.com photographic images are here
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