an interesting little...

... volunteer job I offered myself for on Saturday, which you will find both unusual and possibly discomfiting: recycling used shoes.  If you fall of the far end of the 'excessively fastidious' scale, you should stop reading right now, as the following will make you very uncomfortable.  Since I was a volunteer, you might assume I knew exactly what I was getting into.  But you know what 'assuming' does, right?

Actually, I did not fully grasp the magnitude of the undertaking. I was unprepared for the handling of other people's rejects.  It was off-putting, but in retrospect, should not have been surprising. As well as drastically underestimating the quantity of donations people would drive by an drop off. That was amazed.

In the same way my naive little self was so easily duped by sleight of hand tricksters when young.  Along with those high school kids I admired from afar as a small elementary aged child, when they would volunteer to participate in performances by traveling shows. When some traveling charlatan would come to town to present his skills as a magician or hypnotist in the public schools, and students between ages six and eighteen would be herded into the small-town auditorium. All these years later, my innocence in the ways of those mystery men is still intact. How did they get those big strapping high school football players to 'baa' and 'oink'?

Nothing mysterious or surreptitious occurred: mostly me not thinking it through sufficiently to consider how disgustingly nasty those used shoes and hiking boots would be. They were pretty rank. But there were also some pairs that still had tags on them, never worn. Every type shoe you could name or imagine. Flip-flops and slippers. Pumps or kitten heels. Athletic shoes and work boots. Steel-toed construction boots and warm fuzzy bedroom shoes. Sandals and pointy-toed high heels. Tiny little 'Nikes' small enough to have been on wee little feet that never hit the ground. Huge man-sized hiking boots that looked like they would fit Sasquatch. We took 'em all.

They were matched up in pairs, bundled together and bagged up.  Every bag was supposed to hold twenty five pairs. By the time I left the designated location: it looked like we might have filled two dozen bags. That is a LOT of pairs of shoes.

My understanding of the purpose of the recycling event was two-fold: 1.) keep the shoes out of the land fill. I'm guessing the rubber soles of athletic shoes would last as long as old tires, linger for a thousand years.  Plus (the best part): 2.)  they will be packed into cargo containers and shipped to places where people can use them. Here, I am assuming to third world nations where people do not have, or cannot afford footwear.  I readily admit some of those hundreds of shoes that were donated on Saturday were  unsuitable, and seriously: ridiculous as far as 'practical'. So definitely not 100% usable.  But... still... shoes vs no shoes? Footcovers win every time.