Step One: Footwear
For Christmas I got a gift card to R.E.I. in the amount of fifty dollars. In my ignorance I thought that certainly this would be enough to buy a pair of hiking boots for my upcoming trip to NZ. Of course fifty dollars would be enough!
The cheapest hiking boots were eighty dollars, though most cost somewhere around $150. The most I have ever spent on a pair of shoes is sixty-five.
I was at R.E.I. for two hours trying on different sizes and styles of boots; lacing and re-lacing, stomping up and down the faux-rock ramp, asking the associate to press against the toes or the heels, taking them off to do the whole thing over again. I'm pretty sure they make the laces out of burlap. Coated in shards of glass.
As I put on the third pair I got a little bit whiny and told Michael that my hands hurt from pulling on the laces. He told me that if my hands started bleeding he'd get me some bandages, and that because he worked there all day he couldn't tie all of the shoes that I was trying on or else his hands would hurt. I thought his no-mercy attitude was a joke, but then I scraped off enough skin on my left hand that it did bleed. And he gave me a band-aid. And on we went to the next pair of shoes.
When everything was said and done I left with the gift card still in my wallet, with a name and a (store) phone number, but without a new pair of shoes. Michael looked me in the eyes and said that my blood sugar had dropped and that I wasn't in any condition to make such a major decision. I told him I would come back once my hands had healed.
The cheapest hiking boots were eighty dollars, though most cost somewhere around $150. The most I have ever spent on a pair of shoes is sixty-five.
I was at R.E.I. for two hours trying on different sizes and styles of boots; lacing and re-lacing, stomping up and down the faux-rock ramp, asking the associate to press against the toes or the heels, taking them off to do the whole thing over again. I'm pretty sure they make the laces out of burlap. Coated in shards of glass.
As I put on the third pair I got a little bit whiny and told Michael that my hands hurt from pulling on the laces. He told me that if my hands started bleeding he'd get me some bandages, and that because he worked there all day he couldn't tie all of the shoes that I was trying on or else his hands would hurt. I thought his no-mercy attitude was a joke, but then I scraped off enough skin on my left hand that it did bleed. And he gave me a band-aid. And on we went to the next pair of shoes.
When everything was said and done I left with the gift card still in my wallet, with a name and a (store) phone number, but without a new pair of shoes. Michael looked me in the eyes and said that my blood sugar had dropped and that I wasn't in any condition to make such a major decision. I told him I would come back once my hands had healed.
posted by Missi at 12:33 AM
1 Comments:
Ow, sorry about your hands, that sounds terrible. But it reminded me of when I used to make hemp jewelry all the time.
You gave me a bunch of cool glass beads. I still have some.
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