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That's when I found out she bought the shoes at the dollar store and the whole "space-age technology" thing was just a bunch of baloney. When Mom said she was taking me shoe shopping today, I made sure she knew I was only interested in name brands. It wasn't easy deciding which shoes to get, though. There are about a million different types, and each one is supposedly good for a specific thing.

There are shoes for hiking, shoes for running, shoes for skateboarding, and a bunch of other ones, too. There was a pair of fancy high-tech basketball shoes I really liked. They had some sort of thing in the soles that's supposed to make you jump higher, and I was seriously thinking about getting them. But I got nervous that if I bought those, I'd be

totally out of control on the walk to school. Then there was a pair of green "cross-training" shoes that really looked awesome, but on the box it said they were for the "serious athlete." So if I got those, I think they'd just be wasted on me. I even thought about getting a pair of those shoes with wheels in them, so I could blow by the Mingo kids' woods every day.

I finally decided on some shoes that were sporty but not to over-the-top. Mom asked me if I wanted to wear them home, but there was no WAY I was gonna let my shoes get dirty before I wore them to school for the first time. Plus, it gave me a chance to enjoy the new-shoe smell all the way home. Monday I never noticed how DIRTY the ground is until I got my new shoes. And not just the actual ground, but

the street and the SIDEWALK, too. The way to school is like a minefield of mud and grease and other junk, and you practically have to be a ninja to avoid all of it. In fact, after getting only one block from my house this morning, I turned around and went back inside. I got some of those plastic grocery bags to put my feet in, and for a while everything was good. But eventually the bottoms of the backs got shredded, and then they didn't give me any protection at all. So I just ripped the rest of the bags off and threw them in the nearest trash can.

After that I did my best to avoid the danger areas. I stayed on the sidewalk until I realized I was getting pebbles in the little grooves of my shoes, and I knew those were gonna take FOREVER to dig out with a stick. So I tried to minimize the amount of rubber that touched the cement. Eventually, I gave up and just walked in the grass. By the time I got to school, I was twenty minutes late, but it was totally worth it to show up in style.