Day Three hundred and forty two - Days are forgotten

Exactly a week ago I had a conversation much like the story I'm about to write, though here I shall be touching on different things. I was out and about with my long-time friend Hugo, and we were sitting down on the terrace of a very small park that, when I was much younger - before my teens, even - I got to know intimately well, because it was just across from where my father had his office at the time. I was telling Hugo how I, as a kid, had a deep love for Adidas - and not really everything by them, but especially the items, such as sneakers, polos, t-shirts, whatever, that were part of a very specific subset of their yearly collection, and those were the 'signature series' associated with tennis players Ivan Lendl and Stefan Edberg. And why those two in particular? God alone knows, because I never really liked watching tennis matches, and though me and my brother played a kind of tennis game when we were younger, it wasn't really tennis. But every single year, when these collections came out, I'd fall helplessly in love with them. And sometimes, sometimes my parents would get me something from one of the collections. Clothing and shoes were things that were easier to get, and so sometimes I got a pair of Edberg sneakers, or a polo. But one year, for my birthday, I got an accessory pack that came with a pair of wristbands, a headband, and a sun visor cap, and fuck me if I didn't think I looked like the bee's knees when I sported that whole set. The tragedy was that I unfortunately only had the complete set for a very short amount of time, because I lost one of the wristbands if not on the very day I got them, then very soon after, and I lost them in the very place where me and Hugo were having a few beers last week. 

I used this story as a preamble to illustrate what comes next, in the sense that however much I loved Adidas as a kid, there were definitely some items of theirs that I just loathed. I did a lot - and I do mean A LOT - of window shopping as a kid, and two of my choice places to do that were right by each other : not far from where I live, there used to be a toy store I loved, and right next to it there was an Adidas store. I'd go there so often and stare at things I could never hope to have for so long, that the people who worked there got used to me just coming in and gawp. Of course, every now and then I'd save enough money to get a toy, but the Adidas stuff was just too pricey. I had to depend on the generosity of my parents to get something, usually for my birthday or for Christmas. But during those times of window shopping, where I'd catalog in my mind every single item I wanted to get, I also spent a good amount of time looking at the items I would never be seen wearing. I kid you not - there were some models I found so ugly, I'd get physically sick. I could never understand why anyone would ever want to wear a pair of Adidas Superstar. I could never fathom why anyone would ever find the notion of owning a pair of Los Angeles Trainers? What with its weird peg cushioning system, I found them to be utterly contemptible. But the most egregious of them all for me, the one whose very sight made my stomach churn were the Adidas Samba. God, I hated everything about those trainers. They were ugly, muted, unappealing lumps of ugly fucking ugly fabric. I could never ever - as a kid - imagine why anyone could ever want to wear them. And it just so happened that this year, I found myself looking at those very trainers, and falling hopelessly in love with them. I'd decided that come next year, I'd get a pair. Then I revised that idea, and decided I'd get them for myself as a Christmas present. And then I said fuck it, and got them already. And I love them - they're super comfortable, and all the things I disliked them as a kid are the things I adore now.

This makes me think about how growing up also means acknowledging that your tastes and/or weird biases indeed change over time. This last year alone I've found myself listening to stuff I could never have tolerated before. I'm not into Jazz and I will never be, and yet I've found myself listening to Jazz-fusion, stuff like Return To Forever and The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and by golly, I know for a fact that up until fairly recently I could never have listened to one single note coming from those records. And now I find myself tolerating them, and while I don't think they'll ever become perennial favourites, let alone desert island discs entries, I go to them when I want to listen to something that straddles the line between virtuosity and muzak. And I know that it's too much of a stretch to lump in this kind of artistry with elevator music, but that's what it's always sounded to me before. Well, at least it made me feel the same horrible feelings of wanting to tear out my ears. But now, not anymore, and that's a good thing. I wonder what else will be changing next year in my life.