When to replace your running sneakers
And how to win back your family’s love when you’ve ruined their eclipse experience
I know all about your problems, and I’m here to help. You beefed your family’s chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime eclipse and you don’t know when it’s time to replace your running sneakers. Back in the fall, your wife Ambivalent and your daughter Malice and the twins Typhoid and Treason gave you a presentation about the only rental cabin in the Path of Totality that was still available at less than a six-hundred percent markup. You told them you had to think about it, by which you meant you had no intention of thinking about it ever again and assumed that they would all forget it, too. But they didn’t forget it, did they? They still hadn’t forgotten it when April came and you were all at home while the kids’ friends and everybody you work with and Ambivalent’s lover had great places to experience totality. And they were still talking about the cabin you didn’t book while you were scrolling through all the Instagram posts of the eclipse, with the photos either of NASA quality or of terrible quality but captioned with an exhausting note about how the profound, magical experience could never be captured in a photo but here’s a photo, anyway. And it was while you were trying to ignore all those photos and the household-wide guilt-tripping that you briefly glimpsed the ad that said something like, “HERE’S HOW TO KNOW WHEN IT’S TIME TO REPLACE YOUR RUNNING SNEAKERS,” and, just as you’d ignored the cabin listing in the moment when your beloved family presented it to you in the autumn, you ignored this ad in the moment your beloved Instagram presented it to you in the wake of this eclipse. And you tried to scroll back to it, but like the cabin listing after somebody else booked it a few days after you had your chance, it was irrecoverable. As with the eclipse, getting a good look at this ad was, it turns out, a once-in-a-lifetime shot that you absolutely blew. And now you’re left wondering when your family will forgive you and when you should replace your running sneakers.
A lot goes into knowing when it’s time to replace your running sneakers. Big Running Sneaker would like you to believe you need to replace your running sneakers every time you feel winded. So, you think, their advice should be chucked out altogether, like a pair of old… But the problem is, they are the ones making the running sneakers, and therefore they’ve likely designed the running sneakers to break down approximately along the timeline they say the running sneakers will break down. The only way out of a relationship in which you’re at their mercy is to start making your own running sneakers.
If you’ve been making your own running sneakers, the time to replace your running sneakers is right now. You do not know what you are doing.
Are you aware there are over 62,519 bones in the human foot? Me neither. Frankly, I have no idea how many bones there are in the human foot. What am I, some kind of foot guy? No, I am not. And neither are you. But you know who is? Big Running Sneaker. Let’s get you back into that relationship in which you’re at their mercy, because not being at their mercy is even worse. Big Running Sneaker tends to imply that they’ve done a bunch of experiments in labs and wind tunnels and that they’re regularly, I don’t know, scanning different body types with lasers and working off mathematical equations about heel strikes and variable depths of the parabolas of diverse arch heights, and although, between you and me, I seriously doubt they’re doing anything like any of that, they are the only ones I’ve ever seen even pretending to put in this kind of work, and there is a discernible difference in both comfort and performance between an athlete wearing an expensive running sneaker and an athlete with a shingle duct-taped to the bottom of her foot, so, hey…
One way to know it’s time to replace your running sneakers is if you notice that things just don’t feel right. I mean things beyond the snugness of your ankle and the degree to which your toes spread on impact. I mean things much more generally. I’m talking about your soul. I’m talking about depression. When your soul is weighted with doubt and fear or you are depressed, the natural inclination is to do nothing. So, like, maybe try replacing your running sneakers, I’m thinking. It can’t hurt. Unless you expect it to solve your problems, in which case you’ll be disappointed and feel worse. Sorry. Do not replace your running sneakers to cure depression. But do replace your running sneakers, maybe. You’ll still be depressed but you will have new running sneakers.
It is also probably time to replace your running sneakers when you realize that the reason Ambivalent and the kids have gone away is less because they’re still mad about the whole eclipse thing and more because you’re always in eerily deep contemplation about when it might be time to replace your running sneakers.
If all else fails, do what it says on the box your last running sneakers came in: Replace every two miles or 18 months, whichever comes first.
When you have your new running sneakers, you should run to where your treasured wife and adequate children are. You should run to them, and yell to them, right in front of Ambivalent’s lover, that you have changed. You have become decisive and proven that you are now unafraid of spending money to improve your circumstances and those of your family. You have become a man with new running sneakers.
If they refuse to forgive you, just keep running. Just keep running until it’s time to replace your new running sneakers all over again.