Rubber bands by Emma Harding

I didn’t notice the man at first. He was sat on the other side of the bar, nursing a pint and a crossword. Older, perhaps late sixties, early seventies, dressed in an unremarkable fashion - beige anorak, grey slacks. Ordinary. Invisible.

It was only when he passed by our table on the way back from the gents, that I caught sight of his shoes. Or what was left of his shoes. Tattered, full of holes, and with three rubber bands round each shoe, holding them together and onto his feet.

The sight of these shoes made me sad. Really sad. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. After all, other than his shoes he looked reasonably well-kept, if not well-off. 

As I tried to reconcile his mostly tidy and clean appearance with the catastrophe that were his shoes, I wondered what had happened in this man’s life to bring him to this point? How did he live? What was his story?

While I couldn’t envisage him being on the streets, perhaps he was homeless, making what he could of life in a hostel. Where a change of clothes was welcome but wearing another man’s shoes was unpalatable, even dishonourable. A life of carrying one’s belongings around in a plastic bag. Taking a moment’s comfort in a local boozer, a moment of peace, of normality.

Or perhaps he had a perfectly good home to go to, with an electric fire and books on the shelves. Plus stacks of old newspapers filling the hallway and collections of empty tins, toilet roll inner tubes, plastic bags and paperclips accumulating in the lounge and on the stairs. A home he could only squeeze in and out of. A life where a pint in a pub offered relief but only briefly, before he slipped back to the cramped security of his home.

Wait a minute though. Wasn’t I being just a little over-dramatic? Where had these images of a meagre life, half-lived, come from? Why would the sight of rubber bands holding a man’s shoes in place inspire such inventions?

Perhaps he was just an ordinary guy who simply hated shoe shopping. His rubber banded shoes were lived in, comfortable and who cared what anyone else thought about it. 

Then it struck me. What those rubber bands meant. Why they made me so sad. 

Loneliness. Having no one in your life to tell you to get some new shoes. That you can’t possibly go out like that. That you’ll catch your death. Having no one who cares enough to care about the state of your shoes. 

These shoes were the last thing his wife bought him. Not as a gift. She always bought his shoes. He could never face it. And she always knew the right ones to get. Comfortable, hard-wearing, smart - but not too smart. Like these ones once were. It makes him sad to think of how much she’d hate that he was still wearing the same but now falling-apart shoes after all this time. How she’d be horrified by the rubber bands. He can hear her voice telling him, gently, that he needs to take better care of himself. That it’s more than time to consign these old things to the bin and buy a new pair. 

But it’s the only time he can hear her voice now, so that’s not something he can ever do.