Tough shoes

A tough shoe makes all the difference. I would know, I put mine through tests that would make any terror prof blush and my shoes never failed me. I walk miles in my shoes. I like walking. I walk from Petron Katipunan to campus and back everyday, not to mention the walking that happens going from point A to B to J within campus. I don't even mind walking all the way home from Ateneo. It's becoming often that traffic jams so bad occur that I can practically walk faster than the vehicles. So I just press on from Katipunan past the bridge, past the LRT station and onwards on foot until I see that I can get a ride when traffic is gone.

I'm not really a shoes kind of guy. That's my dad. I'm more on shirts. That's why I volunteered to help in the Ateneo alumni homecoming last Saturday as a marshal. Free shirt, free food, free beer and good music, not to mention what must be a very expensive fireworks display. Ateneo sure knows how to throw a good party.

Speaking of free stuff, my tita gave me these rubber shoes from the States a month ago. It's kind of too rugged for me. It's a little on the hard side. Maybe because it's still quite new. Anyway, I was wearing these shoes on my way school this morning. Because of that darn traffic I got a little later than usual so I decided to just ride a trike to make it to class on time. There was a cute girl in the trike so I rode on the back. Now instead of getting to know that girl, I got to know my tricycle driver instead. Mang Rueben the trike driver and I got chatty after something got stuck in between the shock absorbers and the rear wheel of the trike after entering gate 2 that brought the trike to a halt. The girl in the cab went down to see what happened and while we were waiting for Mang R to get the wheel removed I saw that I wasn't making much of a good first impression. Maybe because I had this stupid look on my face, or maybe she saw my dirty shoes. Yeah, I think it's that.

So since Mang Rueben's trike is lying in the middle of the road wheel-less, he and I got on another trike and that is where we got to know each other. He seemed troubled so I tried to calm him down with some small talk. I think that helped. So we went to the HealthDev building (across ISO) where I got to sit in a wheelchair for a while. that's because that was my foot that got stuck.

If your thinking it's impossible for something to get stuck in between the shocks and the wheel of a trike, believe you me, it can. It happened once with my camera, now it has happened with my left foot. It's not as bad as it sounds, or might have looked. Slightly embarrassing cuz it happened in the middle of the road. At least got to practice my wheelchair driving skills. Now I'll need to practice my crutch (saklay) handling skills.

It's my shoes that saved my foot for the most part. Those thick shoes took the brunt of the damage that would have torn any lesser shoe and my foot to shreds. My foot essentially stopped the forward motion of a speeding trike with sheer friction. It took one hell of a beating. Some of the designs on both sides of the shoes were shaved off. I shudder to think what might have happened if I were wearing chucks instead of those hard-ass shoes.

And these Ateneo kids bitch about not being able to wear slippers anymore because of the dress code. Thank God I wear shoes. Because by the end of the day, a tough shoe makes all the difference.