The Attitude of Red Shoes
When I wanted to wear red shoes, I wore red shoes. For a significant amount of time my wardrobe was centered around matching red shoes. At a young age I was especially unorthodox and spunky. When I wanted to wear my red shoes to bed I did and my parents woke up to find me asleep with red shoes covering my feet. My childhood shenanigans often led me to learn the hard way that complete control over anything is unlikely and overconfidence is seldom beneficial --like when my cockiness led to a nose bleed and a Jeep catastrophe.
Being a headstrong child, I seldom desired to complete tasks and play the way an ordinary child might. Craving more excitement than the world of Barbie, I leapt up from the floor of my playroom one afternoon and began to make my way to the garage to retrieve my child-sized, battery powered Jeep. Desiring to make the afternoon more exciting, I decided I was savvy enough to be able to make my way outside with my eyes closed. Squeezing my eyes shut, I confidently began walking towards the door. Being completely sure I had passed through the doorway, I veered right ready to saunter through the kitchen. Unfortunately for me, my calculations were off and I slammed into the wall. My Mom, hearing a loud thud through the wall, ran and saw me laying on the ground with blood on my face. Hardly aware of what happened, I emerged from my stupor dazed not knowing what had occurred-- apparently I blacked out for a few seconds and managed to give myself a bloody nose.
Viewing my last eye-closed adventure as a fluke, I decided to try maneuvering blind a second time. Opening the garage door with an air of attitude, I gazed at my toy treasure: my forest green Jeep with shimmering orange and yellow flames running down the side and metallic silver wheels and roll bar . With a smile that covered half of my face I approached the Jeep and threw the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat. Thrusting the transmission into reverse, I peeled down the driveway and gunned my Jeep into the backyard.
Our house had a fairly large back yard with a red, rundown shed in the back hand corner, a white and dark green striped swing set that occupied the middle of the yard, and a large tree that stood about ten feet from the swing. This particular tree was powerful. It had a large circumference of about five feet and had survived numerous tornado encounters that destroyed large areas of southern Missouri every year, building it up to be the tallest and most intimidating tree in the neighborhood. The tree’s roots had even broken my friend’s arm when he fell onto them from the swings.
Pinching my eyes closed for a second time, I slammed my foot on the gas peddle and tore through the lumpy terrain of my backyard. All of a sudden, I felt a lurch and heard a loud thud. My Jeep had stopped moving. I pushed on the gas, but I could only feel the vibration of the plastic wheels rotating, unable to go anywhere, and hear the whirr of the battery desperately trying to move my vehicle. Afraid to witness what had happened, I slowly opened my eyes. My Jeep was almost completely vertical against the tree and I didn’t know what to do. Completely traumatized that I had killed my toy, I ran to the house in tears for Mom to help me. Thankfully my Jeep lived to be driven another day, but after obtaining a bloody nose and almost ruining my favorite toy, I decided it was best to play with my eyes open.
Although I’ve grown physically, my personality and all of it’s quirks remains with me today--minus driving with my eyes closed because that would be a disaster waiting to happen. Now 14 years later I’m still one of the cockiest people alive, crave control, and hate when circumstances don’t turn out the way I planned them. When I was four, an outside force quickly put me back in my place explaining to me, “No. Don’t be so bold to think that you can do anything you want, you can’t always have your way, and you don’t possess complete control over numerous aspects of your life.” I didn’t enjoy the realization of this, but I learned the lesson a second time on the high school tennis team with Coach Brummel. I love playing tennis and I know I’m a good player, so everyday whether it be game day or ordinary, back-breaking, muscle aching practice, I always strutted on the court as if I were the best player that ever lived and fortunately one story rings through my memory as one of the few positive experiences that resulted from being cocky.
Coach Brummel is tall and as skinny as the posts of the fence that surrounded the courts. He always wore swim trunks, a basic t-shirt, and a baseball cap to practice and frequently stood with his hands on his hips and turned his left foot outward. I will forever remember Coach Brummel as one of the few enemies I encountered in high school. No matter how much I improved over a given summer, I would only advance in ranking one place, when I should’ve jumped at least two or three over a few of his favorite players. Despite this, I still had an overconfident attitude.
Tension was always the main feeling throughout the members of the tennis team each fall because we frequently had to compete against each other praying we’d mercilessly bump the girl ahead of us down and occupy her spot. One extremely hot afternoon, my doubles partner Kaylyn and I were challenging the doubles team ahead of us. We walked onto the smoldering hot green and red tennis court, sun scorching our backs giving us a tan most people dream of obtaining in a tanning bed, completely calm about the upcoming match. We were too cocky to even give the competition a second thought. This particular game we decided to entertain ourselves in a different way. Instead of applying extra back-spin and running the ball down the ally line creating harder shots, we would try a verbal game.
“I really don’t care about this match,” I whined.
“I don’t either, but we should at least have fun,” said Kaylyn excitedly.
“How do we do that?”
“How about we talk in different accents.”
“Sounds good to me govna. How about after the match we drink a spot of tea. I’ll be terribly parched.”
“And after that we should throw some shrimp on the barbie,” retorted Kaylyn happily.
The ridiculous banter continued for the entirety of the match. We were both too egotistical to notice that we were destroying the confidence of our competitors defeating them 8-2.
Thrilled we had advanced to a varsity rank, we bounced over to Brummel to receive our victory speech. In reality, we heard an insincere talk about “how good we did and how even girls of a lower rank can gather themselves to beat a higher ranked team.” Later, Kaylyn and I learned that Brummel had absolutely no hope for our team winning and originally wrote our competitors as the winners giving them a “I can’t believe you lost to them” speech. In exchange for playing a good game, we got to play that same couple three other times and never had the chance to challenge the doubles team ranked ahead of us.
I still trot onto tennis courts with a smug look on my face as if I were going to compete in Wimbledon and I remember with a smile my little green Jeep that was the coolest toy on the planet. I haven’t transformed much from when I was a child, but I do ponder circumstances more closely and I’ve learned that life is always filled with unexpected twists. Whenever I get too cocky, I always flashback to a goofy kid sitting in her Jeep positioned halfway up a tree.
