3:31 AM Forum Check

Good morning Eggheads…

I thought it must be a misprint but there was a pair of some good looking shoes on the sale rack for only four dollars, and they were almost my size. They were leather too, at least the top part was. Said so inside: “Leather Uppers.” The bottom looked enough like leather to be such. Didn’t matter none because for four dollars I couldn’t go wrong.

I took to wearing those four dollar shoes every day. They felt really good after I stretched ‘em and broke ‘em in some. And they looked good too. People would stop me and asked where I got my shoes. Well, only one did but surely others wanted to ask but were too bashful or something. I told him, Montgomery Ward. He asked if they had any more and I told him no, I got the only pair. He looked sad. That just confirmed what I already knew, I got me some nice shoes, and for only four dollars.

Somewhere along the line those shoes started squeaking and nothing I did could stop it. But I kept on wearing ‘em squeaks and all. At times I sounded like an old wagon coming down the street.

Then one day I felt something sharp sticking in my heel. I took my shoe off and shook it. Nothing came out but when I put ‘em back on the sticking was still there. So I ran my fingers inside the shoe and tore a chunk out of my point’n finger on a shoe nail barely sticking up through the liner. I got my hammer and smacked it a couple of times. That fixed it, at least for a few days until another nail came through and poked me. I hit that one too.

Then I got caught in some rain. I tried to keep my fine pair of four dollar shoes from gett’n wet but they got wet anyway. The next morning the heels were all swollen and I could see why. What I thought was leather was really nothing but cardboard. So I took ‘em to the shoe repair shop and the guy just laughed, saying he don’t fix no cardboard shoes.

My heart was broken, ‘cause I loved those shoes. I left ‘em in the closet a few days, I guess hoping they would get well. They didn’t. In fact, they frosted over with mold so I finally tossed them. Only got about a year’s worth of wear out of ‘em. They just don’t make good shoes like they used to.

I went back to Montgomery Ward a couple of times but never could find me some more of those shoes.

Then I was abruptly brought out of dreamstate because a sensor alerted me to a pressure buildup in the main biofluid storage area. This time it wasn’t one of those ‘hit-the-floor-running’ sort of alerts though and I took my time getting up to the facility maintenance department. Did the lever-pull thing and was done before a canis lupus familiaris could gnaw on his gonads in a futile attempt to reduce the annoyance of an aggressive parasitic insect of the order siphonaptera.

That job completed I proceeded on the communications center where I performed a thorough glance at the Forum and was satisfied that it was functioning properly, and counted among the inhabitants 17 Members and 734 Guests. I think it odd that there are so many Guests but numbers usually don’t lie unless they are supplied by large commercial institutions or politicians. I don’t care at the moment because I was not fully charged before my interruption and am therefore unable to understand the consequence of those numeric manipulations. Math is too exact anyway… I’m returning to my charging station.

Say goodnight Leroy.

Spring “Four Dollars Is A Lot Of Money To Someone Who Only Has A Nickel” Chicken
Spring Texas USA