Shoes
I am forever done with Bostonians. Quite awhile back, when I didn’t need them, I saw some Bostonians marked down from well over $200 is about $30 a pair so I grabbed one pair of each style that had been marked down. 100% natural, all leather high end dress shoes for $30 that fit? How could I go wrong?
Enter the waterproof pair. They made me bleed for about a month before they were finally broken in. Well actually it was only about 2 weeks but that was during fair when I’d work 10-14 hour days and walk incredible distances urgently all the while. Obviously the worst time to break in new shoes but my previous pair, Rockports that I had worn for years, had recently died after a ridiculously long and distinguished tour of duty.
Once broken in they fit well enough but always required an insane amount of force to put on. Shoehorns didn’t help and even a half size larger would have flown off my feet. Other than that this pair served me faithfully for a decent amount of time however from day one whenever I would walk down stairs it would feel as if there was something rattling in my shoes. I was never able to prove it though, even after the autopsy.
Enter the formal pair. They looked nicer than the waterproof pair but took an actual month of bleeding to break in. After that I got about 3 months of wear out of them before they died. How they died was strange too, the heel fell off the right shoe as I was taking it off in the change room at work. Just fell off, nails pointing every which way. Now I still had to walk home and didn’t have another pair to change into…and it was raining.
Why didn’t I get them repaired? Well I figured having walked home in them, in the rain no less, with one heel missing might’ve made repairs problematic. Plus how much would repairs on this $30 pair of shoes cost me? And how long before the other heel decides to fall off?
Medical professionals say a pair of shoes should last about 8 months, after that they may no longer support you properly and may not be the best for your feet and back. I got half that time out of this pair, a month of which was agony.
Are my expectations just a little too high? I don’t think so. My first pair of Rockports were a dream. The first time I wore them I went dancing for 5 hours; they felt like slippers, supported like runners, gripped like boots, and looked every bit of their original $200 price tag but I got them for $50. No breaking in, no bleeding, no pain, no falling heels or things rattling around inside. And despite not being advertised as waterproof they pretty much were.
Did I luck out with that one pair? Nope because my second pair of Rockports that I bought years later for the same price were the same in every way only MORE comfortable.
So, in conclusion you don’t always get what you pay for. Higher price does not always mean better quality. And if my next pair of Rockports end up costing the full $200, I’ll live with it just fine.
