A few years ago Wendy bought boots. It was quite odd, because she brought me with her and got my opinion on the colour and fit, but then asked me to hang out outside the store while she paid for them. I wasn't sure why, until she explained that she wanted to buy them before I looked at the price and had a heart attack over it. Blundstones are excellent boots, she told me, but the $250 price tag would have made me weep.
I wouldn't try to talk her out of buying such a thing, but I definitely would have choked and sputtered when I first saw the tag, that much is certain. Spending more than $70 on boots? Madness!
But recently my inlaws told me they wanted to buy me boots for Christmas. My old boots were perfectly fine still, as they only had a couple of 5cm holes in them, but other people have different standards than me, I guess. I know they would prefer I buy something of high quality and damn the expense, so I went out and dropped a giant pile of money on boots. It made me twitch a little, slapping down my credit card, but I did it.
For the first time ever I am wearing fashionable boots in winter. Aside from dress shoes for work and formal events I have never actually worn footwear that I would consider stylish, but now it is happening on a daily basis.
Perhaps these things aren't stylish where you are, or maybe they aren't practical, but in Toronto in the winter these boots are where it is at. You need a little bit of insulation for the 0 degree weather, and you need them to be waterproof for the slush, but you don't need gigantic boots that go up to the knee either, we don't have enough snow for that. These boots are exactly it, good looking, trendy, and completely practical.
I have even gotten reactions to them from other people. Those reactions have all been "Dude, you paid real money for clothes? What has happened to the Sky I know that wears all cheap stuff all the time?"
It is bizarre to be walking down the street knowing that some people would look at the stuff I am wearing and think that I am the sort of person that buys things because they are a symbol. It is like I am some sort of different person entirely. Who is this man?
There is a Sam Vimes theory of boots that says that you need to buy expensive boots because they will cost four times as much but last ten times as long as the cheap ones. So far Wendy's boots have stood up extremely well, so the theory is working for the moment. Perhaps I have been foolish all these years, buying cheap stuff that only lasted me five years and these new boots will last me twenty years and be worth every penny.
Perhaps not.
In any case I am going to wear them until they are a pile of leather scraps, because I certainly don't want to buy a second quality pair of boots in my lifetime. One should do!
It is worth a lot to have dry and warm feet when it is cold outside.
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