Training Boots M Sheridan

‘No, I don’t like those, I want that pair’ Michael pointed to a pair of vaguely square toed white training shoes with a soft white rubber rim around the base. They had two serrated scarlet stripes on each synthetic side, seven lace holes, short tongue. The sort of trainers Americans call ‘sneakers’, the sort the kids at school called ‘pumps’. No brand. Market trainers. Only the instep bore any marks ‘Man made upper, Man made sole’.

Michael’s father asked the stall-holder for a size five. They were passed down, two red and white fives. Michael sat on the wobbly chair swinging his stocking feet, waiting. This was the market; no foot measuring here, no smiling assistant sitting opposite on that shoe-fitting-stool thing, no ‘OK Michael, put your foot in here. How does that feel? Comfortable?’

His father knelt in front of him and placed the red and white fives on his knee. Taking each of Michael’s feet in turn, he laced the shoes up good and tight. Michael stood and walked slowly along the flattened cardboard boxes laid out on the floor to prevent unbought soles becoming soiled.

Red and white feet. Huge red and white feet. Three times larger in red and white, at least. As he walked with his head up, eyes trained forward, they were still there in his vision. With every step a huge red and white foot came looming into view, new red and white support, and grippy, really grippy. Even as he turned, the shoes remained in his vision. It was right then that he felt the possibilities contained in these red and whites, it was then that he first felt their potential.

‘Yes. These are the ones’.

Up to now, Michael had only worn shoes. Mostly plastic soled brown shoes, and one memorable pair in blue. Like all kids, he had had to endure sensible shoes, shoes that would be kind to his feet, help his feet grow the right way . The time for trainers was long overdue. One of the teachers at school referred to trainers as ‘runners’, most people still called them ‘training shoes’, ‘trainers’ came later, in the late ‘70s.
But Michael and his friends termed things differently to other kids, used their own terms, better terms. They expanded their language, embellished it with enthusiasm, refurbished it for their own use, endowed it with magical properties. Michael and his friends called these shoes ‘Training Boots’ because that was exactly what they were.

Michael stepped softly into the street, a new red and white spring in his step, and the old, hot, yellow summer of 1976 in his stride. Michael was seven years old. He had been born as Armstrong negotiated the moon’s surface, testing his new moon-shoes, but he was named after Collins who stayed in the craft. He didn’t feel like his namesake today, today was his own giant step. He turned to pass Hayhoe’s Newsagent, a sweet shop to Michael, but today the sweets didn’t get a thought.

He bounded and rounded the corner into the Great Northern Road and his route stretched out before him like a carpet. He started forward, rising to a new height by the billboards on the corner, he was twelve feet tall as he strode, and he could see right over the top of the adverts, his new red and white feet shining into vision with every footstep. He passed his pottery teacher’s old Daimler, the one that he and his friends stuffed cigarette buts into the petrol cap of, and wasn’t even tempted to stop.
Excitement brimmed within him and he lurched into a run, his first ever run in a pair of training boots. He was off, in the air maybe, but definitely still on the ground. He ran on, his hands karate chopping the air, twisting aerodynamically with each stride. He ran in a blur past Hovis, past Goodliffe’s Dental Surgery. 120 miles per hour, invisible in motion, Billy Whiz. In two seconds he was outside Kieran’s door, all the way round on King Street and he wasn’t the least out of breath. Kieran already had training boots, now Michael had some too.

Kieran answered the door himself. A wide, curly, toothy boy in a nylon T-shirt and trousers, and of course, training boots. He looked straight at the new red and white fives before him, acknowledged them, looked back to his own black and off-white fives, and then to Michael for the first time and smiled, ‘You got them’.

‘Come on, let’s go straight out’. Michael was burning to wear some more tread and get a few scuffs on the red and whites. He looked at Kieran’s already scuffed, week old training boots and knew he had to get moving. Michael’s boots were faster, he was sure. He had been painfully jealous last week in the park, and he had wanted exactly the same pair, they were slightly chunkier than the red and whites, more boot. But he couldn’t buy the same ones, he couldn’t be the same, similar but not the same, the same would not do, the same was not cool. And the same offered only the same possibilities.

These kids were in competition, they just didn’t know it then. They were competing not for style (that would come later) and not for wit (they would have irony sewn up aged 10), but were instead competing for possibilities, for potential, for chances. In this they were competing with everyone else, but surely they had the edge? Surely they had the edge with the training boots?

Kieran’s father worked at the college, a three quarter mile obstacle course away. The two secured their journey permissions from Kieran’s mother; it was agreed. They were to go down to the college on foot and return with Kieran’s father in his Saab Banana, the latest in a long line of crumbling, grumbling, oddball cars owned by Kieran’s crumbling, grumbling, oddball father.

They left the house, wordless in anticipation. Was this a race? Neither knew, but both knew it was an escapade.
Speeding out of King Street, they synchronised minds. Left into Richard Street, running hard. At once they knew this was not a race, a euphonic dual alignment told them otherwise. Already they knew that the training boots had taken over. King Street to Lovers Walk in 0.35 seconds, a world record. Suddenly an abrupt halt and twin indecision by the road junction: straight over or left? Which way is best? The answer came to Kieran from nowhere – straight over.

He pointed, ‘This is the quickest way’.

Michael augmented ‘’specially when you’ve got training boots on’.

A common wind drove the training boots on and on, past Britain Street and along Priory Road, past St Peters Road on the right. On and on, further, faster. Then another abrupt arrest. The training boots pulled up short by the entrance to Priory Gardens, again indecision in the boys was relieved by the boots.

Michael motioned toward the church graveyard, ‘This is the quickest way’.
Kieran’s inexorable retort came, ‘’specially when you’ve got training boots on’.

Relentlessly fast, the boys and the boots ran on. Across the crossing on Church Street, left into Court Drive and first right into Court Close, running blind. Suddenly, WHAM, a rising monolith in their path. A new gate across the alley between numbers 14 and 16. Locked shut and bolted, an insurmountable twelve foot barrier, the unforeseen obstacle. The boys looked to each other and Kieran pointed at the alley,

‘That is the quickest way’.
‘’specially when you’ve got training boots on’.

Their shoulders dropped and their eyes fell to their boots.
The boots shifted, changed, responded.
The boys had faith in the training boots as they rose up.
They believed in their potential.
They had experienced their capabilities and continued to believe.
The boots rose up.

The boys were in the air. Two seven year old boys hauled into the air, drawn inexorably up and thrown into a perfect arc, a perfect parabola, over the gate, right over The Mall and over Kingscroft Avenue, right over Peter Sansone’s house, rushing down toward the college grounds, silent, majestic, faultless.

They fell noiselessly on the college lawns, invisible to the students there. They picked themselves silently up and walked slowly to the car park at the back, eyes fixed on the training boots. They saw the car standing, not shining in the sun. They looked at the training boots and back to the car, and they felt the possibilities of the rest of their lives.