Pump Me Up!

Back when I was a small wee little lad, shoes meant a whole lot more to me emotionally than they do now. Having the best looking shoes on the planet meant something: it meant that you looked cool, that you didn't get teased, and that you weren't poor (which also got you teased). If you were thinly veiled disguised poor, like my family, you only bought shoes once a year, and on that day you paid very careful attention to what everyone else was wearing. God forbid your feet don't fit in (sorry).

Things were good for many a year, things never strayed outside of this pattern. All I had to do was just look at my friends feet once a year, make my parents buy me a similair pair of discounted shoes on 'Shoe Day', waltz into school and point to my feet and say "look at my sweet ass feet!". Then one year things changed.

A strange pair of shoes crept up over the horizon, ones that some rich kid had (I won't reveal his name for security purposes) and these...noises were coming from them! Once we got closer to see what the hell they were, they ended up being none other than the Pump! I remember the only question we could ask, as we stared at the basketball shaped thumb pumps on each tongue of this kid's Hi Tops was "wazzat?" The Goddam Pump!

Now of course we all needed to have them, and a pair of Pumps cost almost as much money as effing Nintendo! That's alot of dough for a shoe that's supposed to make you a better basketball player, but there's ways around this little conundrum. You see, it costs an unborn child for a REAL pair O' Pumps, not a Generic Pair. So the second I saw a pair of all black, imitation leather, fake pumps at Safeway I had to have them, and I begged my parents for them by pissing myself and crying. They knew how much I had wanted them, and seeing as they were only $14, they went ahead and got them for me. The second I was in the family Horse & Carriage (ie Nissan) I started lacing those bastards up to be pumped.

And Pump I did! I Pumped those stupid things all weekend, I forced my brother and sister to Pump them, I would hop up and down my yard to see if the Pumping action would increase my length. I would just lay on the ground with my eyes closed, bathing in the sunlight, Pumping once every five minutes. Bliss.

When I got to school the next Monday I was amped, I was going to show off my Bargain Bin Pumps and waggle them in everyone elses face. I remember that when I got on the school bus everyone else had those damn pumps too (who didn't have the expensive ones already), and everyone was reaching inbetween seats Pumping each others shoes, like some kind of sick masturbatory scene! I didn't care though, because I got the cool shoes just like everyone else, and back in grade school I wasn't going to be left out.

So it's a Fact: I went through many-a-pumps in my childhood, and man pumping those things up didn't do a damn thing to your feet but piss em' off.