My new sneakers came via UPS last night.

I found some cheap hi-tops on a site called 6pm.com….and so now….after 45 years or so of not owning a pair, I am cruising around in new PF Flyers.

My shoes are just like these.

That’s my contribution to an impending second childhood….my substitute for a red sports car when I’m locked in my mid-life crisis….my way to make myself smile if I get mired in any other kind of crisis.

I CAN RUN LIKE THE WIND!!

RUN, PETER….RUN!!!

The thing about PF Flyers….the thing that a cheap price and fast, free shipping couldn’t satisfy for me….was knowing that I wasn’t going to get a toy when I opened the box.

(Wait!! I didn’t look in the box!! Maybe they still….mayybeeeeee……No….they don’t…..)

The attraction of buying a pair of these shoes that was such a pull….a tantalizing bonus….when I was younger was that if you bought a pair of PF Flyers, in addition to super powers and the ability to run like the wind just because I had a new pair of sneakers, was the fact that you got one of the coolest toys ever available to a kid anywhere….just because you got a new pair of shoes.

You might have gotten one of these:

Or….if you were lucky and your timing was right, you might have gotten one of the Johnny Quest decoder rings they used to give out….like this one…

Or…maybe if the cards were in your favor, you might have been fortunate enough to get one of these things that you had to snap together.

I remember all of them.

I probably had all of them at separate times.

I wore out the shoes a long time after I lost interest in the toy….but that was the price you paid.

You had to need a new pair of shoes before you could get a new toy.

That whizzing tooth was probably my favorite.

I’ve never had another tooth that whizzes after I lost that one.

Anyway….I don’t think that I got a toy this time.

I’ll have to check the box more closely, though.

Just in case.

Me + “action shoes” = UNSTOPPABLE