Soaking Up the Tennis

It was May 23, 1951-my second birthday. Mom and Dad marched me into Smilkstein's on South Moger in Kisco, and asked the man what he had in sneakers my size.

At the time, I was wearing the sharpest pair of baby blue wool booties you'd ever want to see, but I was, nevertheless, hungry for my first pair of sneakers. You know, just as a girl has to go from b??bys?x to stockings, a young boy has to ditch his booties for those very first tennies.

The man with the bald head and the bowl legs brought out his best a pair of the latest K?ds in royal blue. I was awed. I couldn't believe that I was going to get my first pair and that they were going to be so beautiful. I felt a sudden sadness for my one-year-old brother, still too young to own a pair.

The man slipped them on, and it was like Superman in the stockroom at the Daily Planet, a large metropolitan newspaper. I walked around the place with this really cocky stride and checked them out in the mirror. I was too much. I wondered how I put up with those ??? ??? booties for so long.

Back in the sand box, I was pretty much the ruler in my blues. Most of the other kids weren't ready for them yet because actually I only got them at age two because I was very mature for my age. I wore them to bed. I wore them to Sunday School, and I wore them to my first pancake caring contest. Mom made me take them off when I got in the bath tub, but that wasn't very often.

As I grew, so did my feet. Size 11/2 2.21/2. seemingly out of control. My taste in sneakers also became more refined, and I was the first on my block to get the new P. F. Flyers with the red, white, and blue stripes in 1955. I was proud, and rightly so.

I remember in third grade when I walked into Fox and Sutherland to buy my first record, "At the Hop," and Mr. Fox said that my sneakers were damn near the finest he'd ever seen. I was modeling the just-released low cut tennies, and I had to agree with him.

Years have passed, and people have been born, and people have died, and now as I sit here, typewriter in hand. I rub my toes lovingly up against the sides of my latest pair of sneaks. The sad thing is that the blue strips on the toes have fallen off. But it's okay, because I bronzed them.