And How Many Pairs Of Shoes Do YOU Have?
When I was in college, I had a discussion with a female friend of mine. I rarely failed to notice her giant GIANT shoe rack in her dorm room every time I was in there.

"Why the heck do you need so many shoes?"

"Because! I need them all for different occasions!"

Traditionally it does seem that women own more pairs of shoe than men. So I was willing to be lenient. Maybe 10 pairs of shoes. But 20?!!! Come on!

This is at the time when I had three pairs of shoes mind you. One dress pair . One pair of old sneakers. And one pair of older sneakers.

As I got closer to graduation I could understand a little better my friend's dilemma when my number of pairs of shoes increased to five by adding one pair of "nicer" dress shoes and a pair of different color dress shoes (brown if you must know).

Still, I couldn't see how I would ever need like 20 pairs of shoes.

And now? Well, I humbly subimt to you that I was wrong. Mea Culpa but that means I'm still growing and learning about life and that just makes me more hot right?

Errhmm.. ahem.

Back to the story.

I know now that I have tons and tons of shoes. Is it even feasible that I now have 20 pairs of shoes?

Considering I have two hobbies I'm engrossed in (running and dancing) (sometimes at the same time!), it's a pretty good bet. To make this article more interesting .. or at least longer..I'd figure I'd go ahead and tally them all up. I did not count the pink ones I have with tassels because ... well, frankly, that'd just be too embarassing for you all to know that I actually have a pair of those.

Okay, so here we go:

Casual: 3 pairs
1 pair white
1 pair offwhite (total white isn't so good)
1 pair black (total white and offwhite isn't so good)

Dressy: 5 pairs
1 pair black "casual" dress shoes (never thought of dress shoes as "casual")
1 pair black dress shoes
1 pair black "dressier" shoes (for those special occasions)
1 pair brown "casual" dress shoes
1 pair brown dress shoes

NOTE: It's an interesting time in a fella's life when he goes from having more casual shoes than dress shoes to having more dress shoes than casual shoes...

Swing Dancing (Casual): 5 pairs

The starting rule of thumb seems to be that at the very least for each pair of casual shoes one has one needs a matching pair to go Lindy Hopping in. So....

1 pair white tennis shoes resoled in chrome-leather/suede
1 pair of off-white or older tennis shoes resoled in chrome-leather/suede
1 pair black tennis shoes resoled in chrome-leather/suede

and finally:

2 pairs of older tennis shoes resoled in chrome-leather/suede that I just can't throw because I already spent good money getting them resoled. But I'm sure that I'll use them someday again when I go out dancing

Swing Dancing (Dressy): 3 pairs
1 pair black
1 pair two-tone
1 pair two-tone with a different pattern

The sad thing is that 3 pairs of dancing shoes is pretty meager. If I actually decided to own and wear more "vintage" type swing dance outfits, I'm positive that the number of pairs of dressy swing shoes I owned would easily double.


Total: 16 pairs

Not too shabby.

But wait! There's more!

I'm an avid runner, and for me about every 6 months running shoes need to be retired. However, retired running shoes are still perfectly fine for walking in. Unfortunately the "afterlife" of a running shoe lasts longer than 6 months. Kind of like an overpopulation problem with the shoe birth rate faster than the shoe death rate. I think at one time I had collected 4 pairs of retired running shoes and let's just say those certainly take a lot of room up , especially sitting next to the 2 pairs of retired casual dancing shoes!

Nowadays, they just go to the shoe retirement home (a.k.a. GoodWill) except for maybe one pair which is kept as a walking around shoe (which is accounted for above in "Casual").

Still, having adequate running shoes (both quantity and quality) are very important in order to save the legs and knees. In fact, running shoes and soles usually require 48 hours to reshape themselves 100%. So a runner who runs everyday can increase the number of miles they put on a running shoe by alternating running shoes every day. With this in mind, I usually keep 2 to 3 pairs of running shoes around. So currently:

Running Shoes: 3 pairs
1 young pair
1 middle-aged pair
1 older pair

Total: 19 pairs

Add one pair of beach sandals and I'm the sorry person I used to tease back in college with 20 freaking pairs of shoes.

Funny how things happen that way.

AND ... I'm absolutely POSITIVE there are guys out there with collections of shoes that are twice as big as mine! And to them, I have to say .

"Why the heck do you need so many shoes?"