All Day, I Dream About Sex

It's how the Adidas brand of sportswear was mocked back when I was in elementary school: Adidas, classmates joked, was an acronym for "All Day, I Dream About Sex." I had to be pretty young for this acronym to connote anything shameful: by the time you're a teen, you're expected to daydream about sex all day long, and if you didn't, you weren't a guy. Of course, Mother Nature made sure I was wired to think about only That One Thing, and truth be told, that wiring is still in place and will remain in place until I croak. In a world where randy 90-year-olds marry 20-something chickadees, the evidence abounds that the wiring, once installed, never breaks down.

I'm focusing on Adidas in this post because, God help me, I got desperate enough to buy a pair of Adidas walking/running shoes via Coupang. Being a Korean platform, Coupang doesn't have much in the way of shoes in my size. Here in Korea, shoe sizes are measured in millimeters, with the maximum common shoe size being somewhere around 285 to 290 (11.2" to 11.4", so between sizes 11 and 12). This was the upper limit, from what I saw, for most Coupang-available shoes. By Korean reckoning, the shoes I'm currently wearing are a size 330 (almost exactly a US size 13. extra wide)—not because my feet are actually that big, but because I need the toe-box room as a way to minimize blistering and abrasions due to tightness. I didn't see anything on Coupang beyond a size 305 (size 12), but the Adidas shoes I ordered were relatively cheap, so if this turns out to be a wasted purchase, I can always toss the shoes in our building's clothing/footwear hamper for the poor.

The shoes aren't due to arrive until the end of May. I have a sinking feeling that 305 is going to be too small. I'm imagining mushed-together toes leading to a lot of irritation during a trial walk. But you never know: different shoe brands feel different on the foot, so maybe an Adidas 305 will feel all right. At the very least, it won't impede my dreaming about sex.