Lonely Shoes

I hate artificial uselessness.

Yesterday, I was walking down the street and I passed by this shoe:

<%image(20111113-shoe.jpg|450|371|Lonely Shoe)%>

I would not normally take a picture of a shoe. Smaller objects, I will often pick up and hold onto for a while. I have no idea why. But shoes are too big, too personal. So normally, I note them and move on. Yesterday, however, several paces past the athletic shoe, I came upon a thong:[1]

<%image(20111113-thong.jpg|450|345|Lonely Thong)%>

I present these lonely shoes to you because they really bug me. I have no problem with junk: half a remote control, a cracked PEZ dispenser, a crushed Hot Wheel. Certainly, I wonder how these things ended up on the road.[2] These are trash. But what of the lonely shoes? Look at the athletic shoe in the picture above. It is in fine shape. But it is useless. I can’t help but imagine that somewhere else there is a matching perfectly good shoe. Also now useless.

I hate waste like this. We are none of us useless just because we no longer have a match.


[1] Just watch. Now I will get all kinds of porn spam on this page.

[2] This is why the opening of Breaking Bad is so great. How does a pair of pants end up on a country road? We’d all like to think that the random objects we see each have such interesting stories.

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About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

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