I Wanted Little Red Shoes

I never told anyone before now about the shoes, the little red ones. I suppose over the past forty-years the necessity of revealing it swung widely, from unnecessary to 'that's a little strange Ger." Here I am, at the birth of my life's second half, feeling a need to confess — perhaps it's reveal — out of pride, not embarrassment, my longing for those little red shoes. No they weren't my mother's, nor did I spy them in a department store window, nor lust after them in Vogue magazine. No, I saw them on television. It was a Sunday evening, the moment captured in my mind's eye. The little red shoes appeared suddenly like Dorothy's ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz, but they were even more magically transportive. They had the power to take the wearer not home, but the exact opposite, on journeys far beyond imagination, to places that seemed out of my reach. They were brilliant red high-topped Converse tennis shoes. There on that tiny TV screen they were repelling a hundred feet down out of a leafy tropical rainforest canopy, descending from a visit to a world of unimaginable aliens, on the feet of the most curious creature on our planet — David Attenborough. I so wanted those shoes!

I never forget those shoes. Every time I step off a plane in some foreign land, leap from a canoe into a steaming tropical swamp forest, or wander through a marketplace wafting with words and smells unknown, those shoes are with me.

Yesterday I read a Guardian interview of David Attenborough by David Monbiot:

"While other people’s worlds tend to shrink with age, his seems to expand. His curiosity ranges as widely as ever. His ability to understand and assimilate new information seems unabated. “Oh, I forget things,” he claims. When I press him for examples, he tells me, “Well, where I put my glasses – I had them about three minutes ago and they have simply evaporated, they’ve dematerialised. Oh yeah, and I forget engagements...But these, surely, are afflictions suffered by anyone immersed in the world of ideas. He has no difficulty remembering the things that fascinate him.”

I realized a few years ago what I wanted all along was that life in those shoes. I have been chasing that life my whole life. Knowing Sir Attenborough celebrates 90 years soon, and continues with such zeal, I'm certain can be attributed to those shoes. I think I get it now — it takes courage to wear your youth a whole life, for all the world to see.