The Scent of Fine Italian Leather

I had a dream last night that I, among other things, had bought a pair of Nike Air Jordans. Very strange things creep through my mind when I sleep, some of which I don't remember and some of which I don't tell anyone, but this was weird. So, when I was a kid these were the fanciest shoes in the world, better even than those charlatan Reebok Pumps. When the third or so generation of the Air Jordans came out everyone wanted them and in Chapel Hill, where I grew up, damn near no one got them. This was the first time anyone had heard of sneakers being priced higher then $100, and coincidentally the first time kids started getting the shit kicked out of them for their shoes. I remember distinctly only two kids in my school having parents with the money to buy these leathery status symbols. One proud owner refused, for days, to leave the building during recess, and when he finally was forced out, did so with plastic shopping bags wrapped around his new shoes, for fear of getting them dirty. The other one took a more direct approach to shoe preservation by standing guard at all times. When one unsuspecting girl accidentally stepped on his foot he punched her in the back of the head. These shoes literally drove people crazy. So, I woke up deciding that I wanted a pair since I never had them when I was a kid, and now I'm basically a kid who has a job and income so I can buy myself stupid things like panda suits and expensive sneakers. I had planned on looking for them on ebay, figuring that someone must have an old pair that they would like to auction off for twenty bucks. While I was walking around the Buffalo Exchange I stumbled on the exact pair of shoes from my dream, in my size. Mag-fucking-nificent. Only problem was that in my dream, and in real life, I had no intention of paying $115 for a pair of used sneakers. I guess their ironic value caught on early and I missed the boat. I did find it funny that these shoes have exactly the same value now as they did fifteen years ago. And they are also still pretty sweet.