120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

The Unicorn Sneaker

When I found this crazy-looking shoe in a bush behind my college dormitory, I couldn't but wonder who would throw their customized Vans shoe with a unicorn design away. I think its multi-colored design said a lot about the owner, who must be a college student who had stayed a big child at heart. 

The other big question was, of course, where the other shoe was. The shoe couldn't have lain there for a long time as it was neither dirty nor wet, and it had rained two days ago. So whoever had put the shoe there had done it on purpose, perhaps as a part of a hide-and-seek game.

All right, we are talking about college students here who might do childish stuff like that on their time off. 

On the other hand, I thought that the owner of the shoe must be easy to find: I just had to look for the person who wore the craziest sneakers on campus. So I picked the shoe up and went back to my room. 

Over the next couple of days, I discovered that there are so many outrageously crazy sneakers on the market that the sneaker I found was not so extraordinary. Colorful, but not nearly as hard to get into as the Pharrell Adidas Crazy BYW, weird to walk in as the Nike Zoom X Vista Grind or as disgusting-looking as the Adidas Yeezy 390 Blue Oat.

Of these my friend Sam owned a pair - and he kept on reassuring me that they were the most comfortable Yeezys ever. He also supplied me with all the names of the sneakers I mentioned above. Until I had found the unicorn sneaker, I had thought Sam was the biggest sneakerhead at the university. 

Sam whistled when he caught a glimpse of the shoe I had found, "Baby, Baby!"

"Excuse me?"

He took them from me and inspected them carefully. "This shoe clearly belongs to a lady."

"Then perhaps you know someone who is as crazy about shoes as you are?"

"Sure, thousands of YouTubers, people on Instagram and let's not forget 'Carrie Bradshaw,' he said sarcastically. 

"Who?" I asked because I thought that was an actual person.

My ignorance made Sam sigh. "She's a shoe-crazy character from Sex and the City. Don't you know anything about pop culture?"

"No, I'm a hard-working student here. I don't watch Netflix!"

"That show is older than Netflix! What I'm trying to say is that it's an old cliché that women are into shoes. It will be pretty hard for you to find the lady who owns this shoe!"

But it wasn't as it turned out. When I came back to my dorm on that night, a distressed student was on the ground near the bush, inspecting the area as if it was an archaeological site. It wasn't fully dark yet, so I looked at her feet and caught sight of yet another colorful design, a variant of the Travis Scott Nike sneaker Sam had been raving on about for weeks.  

I decided to put her out of her out of her misery and asked her, "Are you looked for a unicorn Vans sneaker?"

She turned around. "Yes, how do you know? Do you know where it is?" 

I didn't like the crazy look on her face as she said this, but I nodded.

"Oh, finally! You know, my boyfriend says I'm addicted to sneakers, which is why he took my favorite Vans shoes from my closet and hid one of them here. He only told me where it is when I told him that I would break up with him if he didn't give it back to me!" she exclaimed. "I will break up with him nonetheless! How dare he steal a sneaker from me!"

So that was the story behind the unicorn sneaker. 

Author's Note: I made the designs on the Vans and Nike websites, but chose not to purchase the shoes.