I looked down at my feet when I was at the eye doctor’s the other day. I was in a chair with a foot rest so the doctor could roll a stool up to look me in the eye. My shoes were closer than usual, and there wasn’t much else to look at. The shoes weren’t a pair!
You might think this is headed toward the joke in Pogo about the farmer who couldn’t tell his two horses apart until he measured them and found that the black one was a foot taller than the white one. (Good material never gets old.) No, they were both red high-top Chuck Taylors, a left and a right. One time when I was rounding up the strays from around the apartment I must have jumbled them up.
You have to look closely to see that the line on the curve on the front of the shoes isn’t the same. I can hear my mother: If you’re so smart, why don’t your shoes match.
I have one pair I think was in the window at the Army surplus store for 20 years before I offered to buy it. The fronts of those look as if they were designed for getting cockroaches in the corners–much longer and skinnier than any others I own. They are also sun-faded into a mellow red. No one has ever noticed those, either. Konrad Lorenz talked about babyness; me, I say there is red-high-top-Chuck-Taylorness, and so long as two shoes seem have it, everyone sees a pair.
converselyspeaking 