“Ready?” he says.
“Don’t forget to hold on,” I scream behind me as our swinging paths cross. I guess I just can’t help but expose my grown-up tendencies.
He reaches the top of his forward swing, classic mistake, grunts and kicks and his right shoe goes flying. Straight up. He whoops and hollers like he’s won a million dollars as he thrashes in his seat.
“Did you see that? That went so high!” His voice has gone up an octave, his smile is luminescent and his shoe is falling perilously close to the monkey bars where other kids are playing. I’m torn between joining in on his sheer joy and lecturing him on the actual goal here,distance, pal!
“My turn!” I say. “This one will clear that fence!”
He whoops again, pumping higher and higher. “No way!”
I’m in the zone, pumping and planning and tilting and bracing, and I flip my knee as hard as I can with my full-grown quad muscle flexing, hands wisely gripping tightly to both chains. My shoe flies. I think it might actually even spiral.
This time there is no arc. It flies straight. And fast.
What I have failed to notice in my exuberance is that between my swing and the dog park there is a running path. A running path with adult runners. Adult runners who apparently don’t consider that a man’s size eleven running shoe might be something to be on the lookout for!
“Heads up!” I yell at the same time as my 10-year-old friend screams something incomprehensible.
A man running down the path sees my spiraling shoe and dodges just in time, cursing. Nearby runners take cover momentarily and then carry on warily.
Before I know it, I’m trying to slow the swing and hop off, which I now remember is the tricky part because I am attempting this in only socked feet. Wood chips fly and sting my feet as I half-brake, half-jump from the swing-set, running full-tilt toward my shoe. “I’m so sorry!” I’m screaming at the man, who seems to be intent on retrieving the shoe from the grass beyond. “I’m so sorry!” I scream again.
In my sprinting, I see that he’s found my shoe, is bending to pick it up and I have a panic moment where I think he might just take my shoe and run off with it! I had forgotten that part about kick-off-shoe. The other-kids-can-be-bullies part. I sock-foot sprint faster from the adrenaline rush, ignoring the increasing pain on the bottom of my feet. When I arrive at the man, he’s standing back up, holding my shoe, looking very confused, and very much like…
“Martin!”
He looks at me, then my socked feet, then my shoe, then at me again. “Liam?”
We both pause for long enough to slow our breaths. I also think neither of us can conjure up the appropriate words at the moment.
“That’s my shoe,” I declare, pointing.
He holds it out awkwardly. I take it from him and, scanning the field for my other shoe, sprint off to retrieve it, hollering back at Martin as I go, “Hold on, let me get my other shoe!”
I return breathing heavily and stand there, shoes in hand, laces dangling, staring at him.
“What are you doing?” He’s smiling now and can’t help himself from chuckling.
I’m still heaving and say, “Have you ever played kick-off-shoe?”
He stares blankly.
“It’s a game. On the swings. You kick off your shoe. And see who. Can kick it the farthest.” My heaving breath is making game instructions difficult.
He looks at my shoes, then back at me, again.
“Wanna play?” I smile broadly and shake a shoe at him.
He’s speechless.
“Watch this one!” We hear, from behind us, the kid in the swing, who is now fully pumped, locked and loaded. We turn just in time to see his shoe fly in a perfect arc toward us. We are in no danger. This poor kid has tiny feet despite his noble shoe-kicking dreams. The kid cackles with laughter, screaming: “Did you see that?”
I look to Martin and back to the kid, who is now learning the art of shoeless braking. He’s a quick learner, and comes running toward us and his shoes.
We hear a woman’s alert voice coming from the perimeter of the woodchip area: “Charles, what are you doing?” There’s a hard edge to it, I notice.
The boy doesn’t miss a step: “Kick-off-shoe, mom!”