You know how just about every comedian has a joke about women and their shoes: shoes for every occasion, dress, and handbag? I used to think they were funny. But if any of these guys had ever met my aunt, and had to help move all those shoes, I doubt they'd be making jokes about it.

I must have hauled three hundred pairs of shoes down the stairs of my aunt's house, out into the U-Haul, taken them to the new house, and unloaded them again. Shoes on racks. Shoes in trash bags and vacuum pumped zip lock bags. Shoes from the 70's. The 80's. 90's, many still in their boxes, never worn. Stacks of boxes. Walls of pink and green and blue and black cardboard bricks with names like Sketchers, Keds, and ten different designer brands I can't remember. And moving all of these shoes, of course, meant moving the accompanying matching clothes and handbags, with the same malady as the shoes: except instead of boxes they still had tags. One of the most perverse things I saw were the hand bags stuffed into other hand bags.

My dreams have been filled with shoes: endless armies of high heels and boots (ankle high, calf high, knee high, thigh high) and sneakers and sandals, marching endlessly across a black and gray designer landscape. Clip clop, slip slap, squeak squawk they go.

You can imagine how all of this must look to a guy who's been wearing the same pair of Adidas for three years and considers them just getting "broke in". I've still got my combat boots and dress shoes from the military, and a freshly purchased pair of Nunn Bush's for job interviews, but that's it, and the only reason I bought the Nunn Bush's is because the patent leather of military dress shoes worn with a business suit make you look like an idiot in the eyes of most interviewers.

Getting my aunt moved involved a lot more than shoes, however, but out of love and respect ( I fear I may have already crossed that line) I will not elaborate. Needless to say it was a seven day, sun up to midnight affair that left me with a bum shoulder, a bruised foot, and a lung full of cat hair, and my grandfather with a case of the shingles.

Boot camp was easier, but then again I was eighteen and healthy back then, with four years of cross-country and track under my belt. Now I'm a 26 year old smoker who regularly eats at Jack in the Box and has a soft spot for Rum and Budweiser (that soft spot is my gut).