The other day, I overheard two teenage guys talking about their shoes on the subway, more specifically, they were talking about their outfits for the first day of school and how many pairs of shoes they'd bought for the summer. One boy said that by summer's end, he would probably have spent a thousand dollars on shoes, because on top of what he has already bought, he still has to get "the black and white ones, the high top Dunks, and the Air Jordans."
In any other situation, I probably would have shaken my head at the materialist excess of these kids, shaken my head for the My Super Sweet Sixteen generation that spends so much without batting an eye- kids for whom cost means nothing and social standings everything. But there was such innocence in the way these two guys were talking, and such giddiness, too. At one point, the boy with three or four more pairs of shoes to buy even started dancing out of excitement for his new sneakers and all the outfits he has planned for the coming semester (they may or may not have been high, because I'm a girl and yet I've never seen people this happy over footwear before). Their joy was so palpable that it was infectious, so that for a few minutes, listening to them talk of wanting nothing more than to go back to school with their shiny new shoes, I couldn't help but be glad for them.
(It also helped that there was a Puma tent sale this weekend and I got some nice swag super cheap. $20 sneakers always put me in a good mood.)
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