Yesterday I called my mother because…well, she’s my mother, and I love her. So anyway, I called and we had our usual check-in, check-up, right before one of us (her) checks out and goes to bed. In the middle of talking about her locking her keys in her car, she digressed into telling me that she has given away just about all my old clothes. Jeans, tees, hats, suits, sweaters, and shoes. Well, not all the shoes. She saved one pair. An old pair of Chuck Taylor’s that I wore all through college. The shoes are literally unwearable, almost as if my feet were sulfuric bombs that exploded in the flimsy canvas sneakers, turning them into mush. They definitely smelled like it…make a dump smell like a daisy.

Anyway, my mom explained that these shoes she refused to throw away, because she honestly feels that someday, someone will want to pay a “pretty penny” for them, when I’m famous.

Seriously.

Though thoughts of fame and admiration float around my head occasionally (just being honest), I’m more tickled by my mother’s faith and almost childlike naïveté, to believe my worn out sneakers could someday be a treasure to a person who considered themselves…”a fan.” I mean, I’d buy Langston Hughes’s hard-bottoms for a small fortune. I’d give an arm for one I Baldwin’s neckties. But my old converses? Me?

Imagine that. Better yet, let me imagine it.