Sally Breslin: My Life: ASICS GEL SHOES

For over 50 years now, I’ve walked at least two miles every day. During the height of the pandemic, however, I increased it to three miles…mainly because I was trying to alleviate my nearly terminal case of boredom.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed a pain in my right thigh-muscle during my daily strolls. When I’m wearing my slippers in the house, there’s no pain, but during my outdoor treks it’s definitely there. I finally realized that my running shoes, my Gel Venture-4s by Asics, are so worn out, they're causing me to walk on the inside of my right foot. This, I also noticed, makes my hip stick out and probably is the cause of my thigh pain.

So I decided I probably should invest in a new pair of shoes before I end up permanently damaging some essential body part. I headed to a sporting-goods store.

When I arrived, the store was empty – and by that, I mean I saw no employees or customers. I had the whole place to myself. I walked over to the shoe department and after wending my way through a maze of Nike, Adidas and Reebok shoes, finally found the Asics aisle.

That’s when I discovered that my Asics Gel Venture-4s had progressed all the way up to Gel Venture-8s.

Apparently it had been much longer than I’d thought since I’d bought running shoes.

I was concerned because I previously had purchased the Venture-4s only after trying on every other brand and style in about six different stores and finding something I didn’t like about every shoe: “Too tight, too big, not enough arch support, too stiff” and “guaranteed to produce a blister the size of a silver dollar,” I’d muttered back then.

I’d started to feel like Goldilocks, minus the Three Bears. So when I finally did find the “this one’s just right!” shoe, the Gel Venture-4, I’d whipped out my debit card and spent the $60 while breathing a silent “hallelujah!”

Therefore, last week I’d hoped I’d just be able to grab another pair of the Venture-4s and be in and out of the store in a flash because I already was so intimately acquainted with that particular shoe. But due to the fact I'd skipped over the Gel-5,6 and 7, I knew I was going to have to try on shoes once again.

And believe me, I wasn't looking forward to it.

As it turned out, I couldn’t tell if the Venture-8s were a vast improvement over their predecessors, or if they had lost something as they’d escalated…because there weren’t any in my size to try on. So I went hunting for an employee.

I spent about 10 minutes aimlessly meandering throughout the aisles before I finally spotted an actual human coming out of the back room.

She looked at me as if to say, “What the heck are you doing here?”

I approached her, held up the Asics Gel Venture-8 and asked if she might have it in size 8.5.

She frowned at me. “That’s a men’s shoe you’re holding. The women’s shoes are on the wall over on the other side of the department.”

“I know,” I said. “The men’s sizes fit me better in this brand.”

“I’ll go look,” she said, still frowning, and disappeared out back. She returned with three shoe boxes. Each one contained some form of an Asics “Gel” style…the Gel Venture-8, the Gel Contend-7, and the Gel Nimbus-24. She handed the boxes to me and once again vanished.

The woman was like Houdini.

I sat down on a bench and after removing a yard of crumpled-up paper from inside the toes of the shoes and undoing the decorative knots in the laces, tried them on. Once again, I was transformed into Goldilocks. One pair was too tight in the heel and the other slid up and down when I walked.

Discouraged, I tried on the last pair, the Gel Nimbus-24. When I laced them up, they felt so comfortable, I began to understand why they had been named after a cloud. I was excited.

But then I stood up and walked in them…and my heart sank. For some reason, they didn’t feel level. My right foot felt higher than my left, so I was forced to walk in an up-and-down motion that made me feel as if I were waddling, kind of like a giant duck.

I removed the shoes, set them down on the wooden bench and knelt so I could inspect them more closely. Sure enough, the right one was at least a quarter-inch taller than the left.

About five minutes later, Miss Houdini reappeared and asked how I was doing. Her tone, however, told me she couldn’t have cared less what I said. I was tempted to test her reaction and tell her the toenail on my big toe had been torn off inside one of the shoes and I needed help finding it.

Instead, I explained that I really liked the Gel Nimbus pair, but one shoe was higher than the other so they made me walk unevenly.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she huffed.

I pointed at them on the bench and told her to look at them for herself. She did and then shrugged.

“I don’t have another pair of those in your size,” she said. “I guess I could order them for you, but it might take a while.”

I figured that now that I knew the style name and number I liked, I could go home and just order them myself online, and probably for a lot less money from another supplier. However, I had no clue what any of the shoes cost because none of the boxes she’d given me had prices on them.

So when I got home, I immediately searched online for Gel Nimbus-24.

They averaged about $150 a pair…on a good day.

PEEK-A-BOO! MY CURRENT SHOE!
(THAT'S MY FINGER, NOT A SKINNY TOE!)

I wouldn’t pay that much for a pair of shoes even if they were sparkly red and had been worn by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

So I’m still clomping around in my ancient Gel Venture-4s. Even worse, my bunion actually poked right through the material on the right shoe and made a hole in it during my walk yesterday morning.

Oh, well…at least my feet will be cool this summer.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net