Airwalk Flats

A Girl from 1998

These shoes remind me of my senior year of high school. I was best friends with a freshman named Jessica, not unusual since most of my friends were under class man. For some unknown reason the classes of 2001 and 2002 seemed to have a much higher nice person to deuce bag ratio than the classes of 1999 and 2000.

Anyways one of our favorite past times was hanging out at the Nanuet Mall (before the Palisades Mall sent it to it's grave), specifically Spencer's where my brother's good friend Seth worked as the manager. We would load up on funny key chains and magnets, mostly shoplifted, which I feel bad about now as an adult. My only defense is that I was a teenager and most teenagers are inherently selfish, stupid, and impulsive. Every other week Seth would pierce another pair of holes in my ears, at one point I was up to ten piercings in each ear!

Me and my underclassman homies would cruise around in my red '89 Honda Civic hatchback, a hand-me-down car from my brother who got it handed down to him from my dad and my dad bought it brand new off the lot back in the day. We would blast Limp Bizkit or Brittney Spears. I would run over curbs. My glove box was renamed "the love box" because it was filled was silly sexual products/toys that I would never end up using.

I remember turning 18 and being excited that I could legally buy cigarettes. Now I didn't smoke, but plenty of my younger friends did, so I bought it for them. Once again I'm going to use the teenager excuse. Only a few years later would I take a strong stance against cigarette smoking and try to adamantly convince anyone I knew to quit.

And life was simpler back then.

I thought I knew who I was and where I was going in life. Funny thing that fourteen years later I'm still figuring all that out.