The Writers' Voice-The Unwanteds by Nathan Black

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"The Unwanteds"
by

Nathan Black

A trend is the worst thing that can happen to a shoe.

Oh, everything goes fine at first. When you roll off the line, you are the style. You’re as cool as a polar bear eating ice cream in a snowstorm. But any time after that, you run the risk of losing your flare. It could be weeks, or months, or even year (baby shoes take decades to go out), but it’s all the same in the end.

Unfortunately, the legacy of Converse ended just a week after I, Mortimer, was boxed and shipped with my wife, Maxine.

We didn’t know for a while. Riding in the back of a semi across the country, you don’t hear a great deal of news; just the usual shoe gossip. (If you ask me, cheating on your partner when you’re tied to her is just plain stupid.) But when we arrived at the store, we soon realized the horrible truth: nobody was buying us.

Even then, I thought it would just be a matter of time. But as the weeks rolled on, it became very clear that Converses were terribly out of style. People saw us, and just walked by. They didn’t even glance twice at Bob and Linda, who had tied their laces elaborately together on the display case.

Pretty soon, I started losing sleep. Maxine and I sat up in the pale moonlight, talking grimly about our situation.

"Mort," she asked, "What happens if we don’t get sold?"

I thought a moment. "Well, I said, trying to recall all those lectures I had slept through at the Shoe Community College, "we would usually be donated to the Salvation Army or something, but I don’t know if this store does that. In a couple of weeks, it might mean…"

"The incinerator?" she gasped.

I clicked my tongue, which loosened our laces a bit. "Don’t think so negatively!" But I was wondering the same thing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It’s hard to say exactly how long we sat there; hardly any shoes own built-in clocks (we’re lucky to get cable). For the last few weeks, not a single human came near us at all. We just sat around and made small talk with the neighbors, trying to get our minds off of our dilemma.

I remember the day salvation came. The two of us were catching the end of Monday Night Football when footsteps began coming our way. Quickly, I switched off the television and got with Maxine in our best pose.

Our visitors were Jim, the arrogant salesman for the store, and a purple-haired teenage girl with three nose-rings, a brain-ring, and a tattoo (and that was just her head).

"Are you really looking for something this old?" Jim asked incredulously. I stuck my tongue out at him, and then slid it back in before he could notice.

"You betcha," the girl said, looking over us. "I’m a size seven—or seven and a half, depending on my mood."

"That’s us!" Maxine hissed. "That’s us!"

"Seven or seven and a half…" Jim murmured, quickly checking the tongues of each pair. Finally, I felt his fingers on me, reading the number. "Well, this pair’s a seven."

My heart nearly stopped when the girl said, "Okay. I’ll take ‘em."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * That was three months ago. Since then, my laces have become frayed, Maxine has developed sole cancer, and we’re both in bad need of a new color job. The girl, who changed her name to Spike, uses us daily. We didn’t get along with her fluorescent socks at first, but soon discovered they were the best pair of neighbors a shoe could have.

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the other Converses. In all likelihood, most of them were probably scrapped, which is hard to think about (I never realized how much I would miss all of that annoying gossip). I hope that at least some of them were bought by creatively-colored, trend-violating rebels. Maybe someday there will be enough to go around.

Posted on the Writers' Voice- 10/22