September is always a super-busy month. There’s the back-to-school stuff going into full swing, Labor Day Weekend tends to be the official end of Summer as per a favorite movie (The Flamingo Kid), the Silder wedding anniversary, 3000 deaths justifying the loss of trillions to invade Iraq, Somara’s birthday, when we tend to go to Las Vegas, just to name a few things. I thought about changing the Header every week to signify cool things every decade.
Note to self, get nice wedding photo from Helen.
Even if things stay with this image of Vans, it brings back a pleasant memory I want to ramble on about because these shoes always do it for me.
With the move to the Gulf Freeway part of Houston, I would be attending public school for the first time since kindergarten. Despite my ongoing evolution toward being a devout Atheist, I had my apprehensions. Catholic schools fill kids’ head up with bullshit horror stories about the lack of order in public schools, like getting mugged in the bathroom. The movie My Bodyguard seemed to fuel this fear. Never mind the institutionalized bullying St. Matthews, St. Agnes and Strake Jesuit permitted or at times, encouraged if the kid’s parents were bigshots. I think the bigger concern I was coming to grips with was…I wasn’t special anymore. Instead of attending a relatively smaller school where you practically knew everybody and vice versa, I would be a mere blip in place with 3000 students. Brian got this shock the year before, now it was my turn to receive my comeuppance. (Pardon me here, I just skimmed a similar entry from five years earlier. I somehow, inadvertently plagiarized myself! I promise the follow will be more original.)
Mom took us shopping before or after Hurricane Alisha (sic) and the one really cool thing I remember her buying me was this lace-up pair of Vans. The Header picture doesn’t do the originals justice. The pair I had in 1983 came up higher on the ankles, not quite like the Chucks I prefer. They didn’t have the signature toe area neither. What I could find via a Google search makes its point.
I really dug those shoes. It softened the sting of public school. I remember almost missing the bus on my first day too as I ran like hell in them.
Within weeks, I came to love public high school. Being relatively anonymous was great because it really limited the bullying you’d receive, if at all. Seeing girls my age not having to wear uniforms was awesome. The Vans were never a conversation starter though, the brand and style were becoming passé already. I didn’t care. They were comfortable and I had been accustomed to wearing something in a solid color, the whole checkerboard thing was rather daring for me, what I thought was New Wave.
I returned to the Chucks fold in 1985 when Vans were very difficult to find. The Vans people have been more successful now thanks to Tony Hawk. They have licensed properties to compete with Converse too: Marvel Comics, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Hello Kitty, Iron Maiden, Bad Brains and Kiss. Nice try but I think I will only get a pair for getting through TSA’s idiocy faster at Bergstrom.