Courage

The "Leap of Faith"was the most frightening thing I had ever laid eyes on in my fourteen years of life. It was a terrifying sight even from the ground level and could not be more appropriately named. Leap of Faith is a water slide in Atlantis Resort, Bahamas that drops a near vertical sixty feet into a tube that's surrounded by a tank of sharks as if the drop itself wasn't scary enough. Yet I needed to ride it. I wanted to ride it. It was, after all, all I'd fantasized about ever since I discovered my family was going to Atlantis for vacation. But of course, I put it off till the last minute, as I always do with things that frighten me, until it was our last day at the resort. Up until this moment I had spent my vacation preparing myself. I started with intermediate slides, working my way up on the fear scale to Leap of Faith's sister slide, Abyss, a nearly identical drop without the shark tank or any form of vision as you descend into complete darkness. Now some might say that the Abyss would be scarier because you have no idea how large the drop actually is, but that's what I liked about it. You see, most of my fears can be deceived by convincing myself otherwise, such as convincing myself that my descent into darkness would take me one of the more mild slides I had been on earlier. So the Abyss was actually quite easy for me to conquer. However, there is no deceiving your mind about the sixty foot drop you are staring down to your death. And so, just as the ride says, I took a leap of faith. Or, I rather took an inch of faith as I hesitantly inched my my way down towards the slope of the slide until I let gravity take course and experienced the six most thrilling seconds of my life. Yes, I was terrified the entire time, but an act of courage can not be called courageous if there is not at least some element of fear. What makes an action courageous is the fact that you did not let that fear affect your decisions.

A Shoe Story

It's a hard knot life for us shoes.

But there is no warning for what is entailed for the life of a shoe. They don't tell you this when you're being manufactured. The beginning stages are what we shoes like to call "the glory days". You're assembled in China, given a "perfect match"(which actually isn't all that it's cracked up to be, but I'll tell you about that later) , and then you're packaged in a box, shipped off and wait on the shelves of local stores, such as Payless, to be purchased. Not so bad, that is until you actually ARE purchased, and then you're eternal misery begins.

The first day on the job I realized being a shoe stinks. I mean literally, I wreaked of musty and sweat. You'd think they'd learn to wear socks with closed toed shoes on a hot day. But then again I'm expecting too much from them, after all they don't even know how to put me on properly. Every day I'm shoved on impatiently, not even bothered to be untied as my heel is being stretched and pulled in various directions as the giant mass of foot stuffs inside me. You think this is bad? Just wait until that oaf stands up and you're forced to endure the entire weight of that person.With every step they take I can feel myself physically molding into the shape of their foot, losing that memory foam freshness I once had as I succumb to their overbearing pressure and lose myself. How quickly those new shoe praises from other humans go away as you become worn out and colors become faded from being shuffled and dragged from here to there.

And every time a human sees a spider, why is it I'm the first thing they reach for to kill it? And you just know they'll be thrashing me around for a good five minutes until they finally kill the dang thing. And as a bonus for this excruciatingly painful experience, I get to keep the squashed remains on the bottom of me. Oh joy. Then, when your wearer decides you are no longer special to them, that is when they just stop caring altogether and life just gets plain nasty. They no longer bother to avoid that mud puddle on the street or fail to notice that piece of gum directly ahead of them that I am silently screaming/praying for them to miss. They leave you in plain sight of their devil dog, so it gnaws you to bits. And I won't even tell you what I think I stepped in when I entered the public bathrooms at the beach. 

Hearing my sad tale you would think misery loves company, and that we are twin soles, but that is not the case with me and my "perfect match". Everywhere I go, he goes, always a step behind or in front, but never more than that. Do you know how annoying that is? To never have a moment to yourself without the other one always being there. It's like I don't have my own identity. And it's just humiliating when I'm put on the wrong foot. Hello? Do I look like I belong on that foot? It's enough to drive a shoe crazy! And I can't even count the number of times that son of a cobbler tripped me by stepping on my laces. My only hope of escaping this life of misery is losing my "perfect match" and going to that magical bag labeled DONATIONS where all the shoes go after they've served their time and can finally live a retired life without ever being worn again. 

GOALS!