This is my favorite time of year.
All year, I look forward to receiving my special issue of Sports Illustrated. The other day it arrived.
For those of you who don’t read Sports Illustrated, I’m talking about its annual sneaker issue.
As soon as the postman delivered my special edition of Sports Illustrated, I unwrapped it and began marveling at the gorgeous models inside. They were a thing of beauty. The girls weren’t bad looking either.
The thing that caught my eye most was the new LeBron X Nike Plus basketball shoe. They are, of course, everything you look for in a basketball shoe. They have elegant styling, are embedded with cool technology, and cost an arm and a leg.
The LeBron X Nike Plus basketball shoes will retail for approximately $270. I know there are those of you wondering if this is a misprint - it isn’t. For the lucky few who will own a pair, they will shell out nearly $300 for the honor.
Of course, these are not just mere basketball shoes. I’m sure they are the result of hundreds, if not thousands, of children working long hours in the Nike factory in Gtakakil. And as my Uncle George used to say: “You can’t have great hoop shoes without some kid in a third world nation working tirelessly.”
In case you are not the basketball shoe aficionado that I am, let me tell you all about the most awesome pair of sneakers to ever grace the planet.
Not only will the LeBron X’s make the wearers look cool like LeBron himself, but the shoes will also tell the wearers how high they’ve jumped, how far they’ve run, and give them high fives on any and all dunks. What’s not to like, right?
Anyway, I was so smitten by the sneaker (and the girls) that I lost track of time. My wife, evil woman that she is, brought me back to reality by pounding on the bathroom door.
“What are you doing in there, Vince?” she asked. “You’ve been in there a long time.”
“Uh, nothing,” I replied, wiping the drool from my lips.
She stormed into the bathroom and caught me red-handed. I tried to conceal the magazine, hiding it behind my back. But I couldn’t fool her.
“What were you looking at, Vince?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Then why do you have sneaker lust in your eyes?”
I thrust the magazine toward her and she ripped it from my hands. She looked at it and said, “The annual Sports Illustrated sneaker issue. I should have known.”
“I was thinking about you as I looked,” I said sheepishly.
“Do I look like a fool, Vince?”
“That depends. Do you believe what I just said?” I asked.
My wife leafed through the issue, and then turned to me and asked, “Is this what you want?”
She was pointing to the red, white, and blue pair of LeBron X’s that Brooklyn Decker was wearing. The shoes made me proud to be a red-blooded American male. So proud that I shouted out, “Yes, that’s what I want!”
“Figures,” my wife said.
She tossed the magazine at my feet and walked off.
My wife is frugal. Too frugal to understand how important these shoes are to millions of men (red blooded American men). I didn’t want to argue with her so when she came back into the bathroom, I blurted out, “I’m not buying the shoes.”
My wife laughed and said, “Try telling me something I don’t know.”
Perhaps I will not get to buy a pair of the coolest basketball shoes ever, but at least I can look at them anytime I want thanks to my collector’s edition of Sports Illustrated. Man, the shoes are something to look at.
The girls aren’t half bad either.
