Nothing But Crocs
By: Dani Mirth
I can still remember the first time I saw the Melbourne Crocs – a black slip-on. I was out with a friend browsing the streets and shops on a vacation far away from home. I don’t know how we ended up in that specific shop. All I know was that I was going through the motions of scanning through the shop when I saw them on a rack. I fell in love completely, thinking to myself “this is it.” I wasn’t even looking to buy anything. At the same moment, my friend leaned over to look and said, “Those are very cute – so you.” Maybe he was going off on the dumbstruck look on my face that people get when they can’t believe they’ve found exactly what they were shopping for in exactly the way they had imagined it. I tried the different colors on and couldn’t get over how well they fit and how comfortable they felt in comparison to what I had on at the time. But I couldn’t really afford it, as I was traveling and didn’t have the budget for shoe shopping. I convinced myself that it would be cheaper in the States. For the next three weeks, I went searching for them in all the local Crocs shops…with no luck. Near the end of the third week, I decided on biting the bullet of the shipping price and waited another two weeks to order them online. Upon hearing this, my friend convinced me to wait until the following week as he had promised to go with me to Austin to look for them. I reluctantly accepted as I was still trying to decide on the color I wanted.
Melbourne Crocs
We never looked for them in Austin. My shoes arrived at his house three days before he came to visit me and they arrived at MY house, gift-wrapped. Even before opening it, I knew they were the black slip-on Melbourne Crocs that I wanted – down to the exact color. He also got himself a pair in the same style so that during his visits, we were always matching. In these shoes, I felt as if I could run fast enough and jump high enough to take flight. They are so convenient and comfortable that I would at times forget I was wearing shoes. They came with me on all of my adventures, and in a way I felt as if he did too. Whenever I feel down, looking at the shoes and wiggling my toes in them as I remember the happy moments never fails to cheer me up. My most treasured of those moments was the mental photo of our two pairs of Melbournes, side by side at my door. Time passed, and his visits became less frequent and soon enough, they stopped altogether. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in months. Nowadays, at my door, it is just my pair of Melbournes – yet each morning as I go to put them on I still see two.
Before writing this story, I wondered if anyone ever looked at my shoes and thought to themselves, “what’s her story?” If they knew my story, would they wonder “was it worth it?” If you ask me, my answer would be “OF COURSE!” And I hope that will always be the case.
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