My Pumas are a window to my soul

Can I shop myself out of a funk with a rainbow of throwback sneakers?

Late one night last fall I was sitting in an emergency room in Hampstead, N.C., waiting to see a doctor and wondering if one of my retinas really was floating around in my eyeball like a bed sheet torn from a clothesline. I was feeling sorry for myself — a state I’d increasingly found myself in — and even the conversation going on in the next cubicle failed to cheer me. A woman was pulling up her pant leg to reveal a poorly maintained wound she’d suffered in a recent car accident.

“Whoa,” said the friend who’d driven her to the ER.

“I know, right?” said the injured woman.

At least she knew what was wrong with her, I thought. What was wrong with me?

Just then a security guard on his rounds walked past me. “Those are some nice sneaks, man,” he said without breaking his stride.

They were Pumas, the antidepressant I’ve been applying to my feet for the last year or so.

“Thanks,” I said. “I have a bunch more colors at home.”

These were crimson — what Puma calls “Regal Red” but what I would call “cabernet” — with the shoemaker’s signature swooping line (the “Formstrip”) along the side in white. The model is called the Puma Suede and falls into that category of retro sneakers that were once used for actual sports — the Clyde (basketball), the Palermo (soccer) — but now adorn the feet of aging hipsters with bad knees, weak ankles and (possibly) detached retinas.

It had not been a good year for this particular aging hipster. My mother had died. My father wasn’t well. I’d accepted a buyout from The Washington Post¹ and felt constantly antsy and rudderless. I needed something — I deserved something — that would make me feel better. So I went online and started buying Pumas.

It’s called “retail therapy.” The respected Cleveland Clinic has a whole web page devoted to it:

The term “retail therapy” describes the act of shopping with the goal of improving your mood or avoiding difficult emotions. Retail therapy usually involves buying things you want, not things you need.

Yep. That’s me. But is this me, too:

Shopping shifts from being therapeutic to a problematic compulsive behavior when it becomes a go-to way of dealing with anxiety, stress or loss.

Putting that aside for a moment, why Pumas? Why not, say, Adidas? Well, a few years ago I listened to a great BBC podcast about the history of athletic footwear called “Sneakernomics.” I learned that Adi and Rudolf Dassler were sneaker-inventing brothers from Germany who feuded bitterly and then split up. Adi struck me as more of a jerk than Rudolf, so when the time came to self-medicate with rubber-soled shoes, I went with the company Rudolf founded: Puma.

Archie does not care for Pumas — or any shoes, really.

Puma sells hundreds of models of shoes. As is the case with modern sneakers, most of them strike me as ugly: bulbous and covered in excrescences. I guess when I fell into my middle-aged funk, I pined for a simpler time, a time when my parents were healthy, my life had purpose and my retina was attached. So that’s what I started ordering: classic, low, 1970s-era Pumas in bright colors.

I downloaded the Puma app onto my phone. My family started to worry about me.

I came of age in a time before kids shot each other for expensive and desirable limited-edition kicks. When I grew up, a particular tennis shoe didn’t show that you were rich, but it could show that you were poor. I did junior high in Texas, near San Antonio and a place called Boysville. Boys from that orphanage went to Kirby Junior High with me and every single one of them wore black fabric sneakers with a thin, white rubber sole and fat, white laces. They were shoes that weren’t sold in boxes but in big tubs at K-Mart, tied together to make pairs.

The Pumas I’ve bought aren’t very expensive. I don’t think there’s a great demand for these models, so most of them are around 50 bucks a pair, less when on sale. And currently I only have four pair. I’ve had more, but like a lot of things you order online, they don’t always work out. A cool pair that looked crocheted were basically unwearable. Another pair always seemed to pinch my toes. Off they went, back to Puma.

Puma continues to try to entice me. I hear from Puma more often than from most of my friends. After reading this, ads are probably going to start showing up in your feed, too.

My family has gotten tired of hearing me talk about Pumas. I don’t think they’re worried I’ll bankrupt us, but that my obsession masks a deeper disquiet best treated by something other than a sneaker. I can’t say that they’re wrong.

After I’d waited about three hours in the North Carolina emergency room, a doctor examined me. I did not have a detached retina, he said, but probably an ophthalmic aura, cousin to a migraine. It can be caused by stress, he said.

I didn’t say what I was thinking: You know what relieves stress, at least temporarily? Pumas.

The other shoe drops

To be honest, I’ve recently gone off my Pumas a bit. Retail therapy may be one thing, but aversion therapy is another. In December I walked 10 miles across London in my Puma Suedes. Wearing a tennis shoe designed in 1968 is like lashing a bed slat to your foot. There’s no arch support, no heel cup, no shock absorption. By the end of the day, I could barely walk at all. Each footfall was like stepping on broken glass.

I had to send my wife to the store to find something else I could wear. She came back with…Crocs.²

My feet got better. If I wear my vintage-style Pumas now, it’s only in situations where I won’t have to walk far. I’m like a woman deciding when to wear stilettos. Is this event Puma-worthy?³

1. I see now how lucky I am to have taken the buyout. I feel like the guy who arrived too late to get on the Titanic.

2. Okay, I get it. Crocs are comfortable. However, I will never wear them outside.

3. As with that ER security guard, I get a lot of comments about my Pumas. People find them delightful.