These Boots are Made for Rocking (?)

I’m sure all hoarding starts somewhere. Maybe my inability to throw away my Doc Martens is where my hoarding adventure will start. I bought a replacement pair nearly 2 years ago, but I can’t seem to get rid of the originals.

For those who aren’t weirdos like myself, allow me to introduce you to what some would call just “a shoe”; the Dr. Marten boot.

The traditional black leather low-shin, lace-up, work-boot looking thing was way more than just a shoe to me as my brain cooked though. They were a symbol of things I wished to represent; independence, toughness, style (dramatic eye roll on that one), and essentially just being my own person (just like everybody else).

But fashion statements like that are expensive.

ForEVER, I couldn’t justify spending $110 to “fuck authority.” So there I sat, in a self imposed shoe purgatory. I tried to soothe my feelings of shoe shortcomings with some Mock Martens. ‘Twas not the same at all.

But then…!

Baby Daniel, my mom, and I had a day of adventure. We’d gone to the Renaissance faire. We made too many jokes about “ye olde convention center” where it had been held. Then somehow, we and that stroller found ourselves at the mall.

I’ve got a weird relationship with money. I like to think of myself as “situationally cheap.” Like, most of my clothes are second hand but then I also own a small fortune of lululemon pants. Also, I’ll be baffled that people eat out often. Like “how do they afford that?!” But will head to a store to buy a sweatshirt, and come back with a 4 wheeler.  So, even though I  was an adult doing well, it wasn’t going to be still a given that I’d buy the boots I was drooling over. I was a home owner, a parent, a possessor of good credit,….but $110!?!?!?

Grammie thought I should have them. She did all the mom things. She even said they made my legs look great (I was wearing shorts while boot shopping…obviously.)

With a “fuck it” and the swipe of the card, they were mine.

Many an adventure I have been on in my DMs. Most of them only interesting to me. They have a cut in them that I got my unknown means when on a trip in early pregnancy with baby Dirty. I recall precisely how nauseous I felt as we went to Basque food in Alturas, but have zero idea how the boot got cut. They are slightly melted on the right toe from getting too close to a fire at the beach in Somoa while there for a family 4 wheeling trip. The left sole still has paint on it from the time I walked right through someone’s catastrophic paint wipe out in front of the Chico Mall.

I loved them so much, I needed an additional pair. Thanks to ebay and quite possibly some recently deceased “lady of the night,” I was able to procure a second pair for $40. There’s a change in how I feel when I lace up a steel-toe punk boot that comes to just below my knee. Those boots are what I wear when I want confidence. I’m not sure why. It may be as simple as “after what a pain in the ass it is to put these on, there’s not much else that can irritate me.” Every time I wear them, I hope that I honor them by wearing the shit out them.

It stung only slightly less when I bought the replacement pair for my original low Doc Marten’s a couple years back. Originally, I held on to the OGs because I was “breaking in my new pair.” I know that after this long, that’s no longer a valid excuse. So I moved them out of the closet. They’ve moved around my bedroom for a couple of weeks. Today I tried to take them out to the trash. I’ll try again next week. And quite possibly the week after that.  And the next week….and the next week…