If you see me walking down the street, chances are I won’t make eye contact with you. It’s not because I’m self-consciously looking at the ground or superstitiously avoiding cracks, it’s because I’m staring at your sneakers.

Sneakers are the ex-boyfriends I never got over. Some were more memorable than others, like the adrenaline-fueled high-top AirForce1’s I wore the first time I skipped class (and got caught), or the classic black Adidas Superstars that scaled the slippery cedar shingles of my parents’ roof when I suntanned more than studied in highschool. Like the rain-washed Chuck Taylors that sprinted through New York’s torrential showers last summer, my sneakers have stayed with me through the warmest, coldest and wettest surfaces of life’s fast-moving moments.

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The early years of my (tom)boyhood and twenty-something womanhood are laced back to the sneakers I wore growing up on the island. In 2005, I wore my all-white OG Reeboks. Before moving away to university, I wore my thin purple mid-top Nike Greco’s, a wrestling-style ladies premium that made me feel like Muhammad Ali, rolling with the punches that fluctuated with my angsty premenstrual syndrome at the awkward age of 17.

Lately, more so than ever, my sneakers say a lot about my mood. Like the retro AirMax90’s I wear on Sunday, when I wander around in no particular direction, purposely getting lost in a city I could never get lost in. On Thursday, when dodging through the late afternoon dinner crowds on Dundas West, I lace my white Converse tight, paralleling my restless “I need a drink” pace; finicky, never still. In the quiet waking hours of the morning, I wear my black and white Nike Roshe Runs. They stretch in all directions, allowing my feet to inhale the morning breeze as I jaywalk through every crosswalk down Spadina, not looking both ways.

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The colours of my sneakers match the hostility I feel in the shorter daylight hours of fall. In the sweltering heat of summer, I wear my thick soled white Vans to hop the fence into Alexandra Park pool at midnight, or dance like Solange at sweaty overcrowded funk nights in Kensington. My shoe closet is a collection of scuffed experiences, with memories in every stain, hole and tear.

I wonder if other people feel the same way about their sneakers.