It was a normal day, like any other.
I woke up after the third alarm, as usual, took a shower, got dressed and ran to the car to push my tardiness down to an acceptable margin. After second period, I was excited about the privilege of walking back to main campus in temperate weather.
But then, on the way to my appropriately shaded place of relaxation before the next round of hellfire and brimstone, I saw them. Them. Mere days ago, I had thought they were nothing more than a meme, something that the top 1% of reddit.com/r/streetwear would purchase and dangle above the plebian masses. How could I be so wrong? Black Yeezy Boost 350’s. Right there on the feet of a high school student. My life was over.
I was not wearing what I would call my best attire. I remember the outfit vividly, as a child remembers the day they discovered Santa Claus wasn’t real. Grey Uniqlo Airism athletic shirt, C9 basketball shorts, Nike sandals and a ragged Herschel backpack. Neither my body nor its furnishings were ready in defense against footwear that flexed so hard it made Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a skinnyfat, newly registered gym member coughing blood on the rowing machine.
“Holy crap,” I told my friend, interrupting his story about finishing a whole sci-fi book in health class. “I need to snapchat this.”
The pair of shoes in my snapchat frame were designed by Kanye West for Adidas, fabled for their resale price of sometimes over $700 on Ebay and their attempted theft straight off of Travis Scott’s feet during a concert in Germany. Flashback to my $25, battered Nike slides. I was done and I knew it.
They might be fakes, I told myself, imported from some cheap Chinese retailer specializing in knockoffs. But deep in my heart, I knew I had been caught with my pants down and now Yeezy fire was spreading up my legs.
Moral of the story: don’t come to school in the freshest threads for yourself, do it as armor against the people who have the means and, more importantly, the motive to stunt on you.
It can happen to the best of us, but be safe when you wear basketball shorts. In your very moment of weakness, you may be flexed upon.