Playground Shoes

If you have ever experienced the disheartenment of having to wear hand-me-downs, you will relate to this story. It was June of 1985 and school was letting out for the summer.  My mother had just brought home another box of clothes that my older cousin could not fit into any longer.  I have a lot of cousins and it was customary for us to hand clothes down to one another. I tore open the box with fervor.  For the most part I enjoyed rifling through a box of my older cousins clothes because I thought it was cool to wear something that someone three years older than me was wearing.  However, I was not prepared for what I would see next. Sitting on top of a neatly folded pile of sweaters was a pair of the ugliest dark brown, lace-up shoes I have ever seen.  Before...