goodbye, Rockports

When I bought my Rockports way back in, oh, 2011 or so, they set me back nearly $80. They fit perfectly on the first try and never needed to be broken in. I wore them faithfully for years, and recently, I wrote about getting them repaired.

And now they're gone.

Perhaps this is my fault, but I think the fucker who actually threw my shoes out is more at fault than I am. I had originally brought my New Balance walking shoes to work in a plastic shopping bag in order to take them out to the shoe guy up the street during lunch. While I was with the shoe guy, he insisted on making me wear my New Balances to show me how different they would feel once the insoles had been removed. I had no choice but to take off my Rockports and stuff them into the plastic shopping bag.

I wore my New Balances the rest of the day, and because I had been planning to walk that night, I left my old, battered Rockports—still in the shopping bag—next to my desk, thinking I would take them back home the following day. The next day came... no Rockports. Because I know my memory often plays tricks on me, I sat and thought hard about whether I had perhaps taken my shoes home with me the night before, but that was impossible: I had gone for a walk without the extra encumbrance of those shoes. The only possible explanation for my shoes' disappearance was that the old guy who cleans our office at night had seen the bag next to my desk, assumed it was garbage, and thrown the shoes out.

So I wrote a note in Korean and left it where the cleaning guy would see it. The note basically said, "The shoes you threw away were NOT garbage. If possible, PLEASE get the shoes back to me." I went home and checked around my place to see whether my shoes had somehow ended up in my apartment... nope. Nada. I hadn't hallucinated.

The following morning, I got an apologetic note in return, which somewhat disingenuously said that my shoes had been placed "in the garbage" (which wasn't true), so the guy had thrown the shoes out. The reply note went on to say that the cleaning guy had tried to look for my shoes, but they had already been taken away. The note finished with a promise never to make that mistake again. I bitterly noted that the custodian had misspelled "sorry" ("재송합니다"). A man who can't properly spell "sorry" probably shouldn't be expected to tell garbage from not-garbage. Perhaps this was all my fault, after all.

I'm upset to lose such a nice pair of shoes. Those old Rockports were the right width for my feet, whereas my new Rockports need some stretching. It feels as though nearly a hundred bucks went down the drain, but then again, those shoes were—apologies for the pun—on their last legs. I'm just glad that the guy hadn't thrown away my new pair of Rockports.

Anyway, lesson learned: if I leave an important bag on the floor in my office, I'd better tag it as NOT GARBAGE, or it'll get chucked out by our clueless custodian.

God-fucking-dammit.