A View To A Kill

A view to a kill from
my balcony

The morning of Sunday, November 7th, marked the end of daylight savings time, and the day of reckoning for my ultra-stinky Adidas tennis shoes.  The complaints about these shoes had reached a critical juncture and I could no longer ignore the people closest to me.  I opened my 2nd floor balcony screen door and tossed the pair of shoes on to the concrete below.  I didn't even accord them the dignity of walking downstairs and placing them into the community trash can on their transition to their final resting place.

A little about how we got here.... these shoes were purchased on what seems like an eternity ago.  Typically, I use my tennis shoes for 6 months before holes develop on one or both sides around my big toe area.  Like the Energizer bunny, these pluckers kept going, and if it weren't for the abhorrent smell, I'd have worn them for a few more months.  I don't have smelly feet, yet, for a long time I couldn't figure out why these shoes smelled so transcendently foul.  It was likely because of lack of breathable fabric.

"In 1998, Pamela Dalton, a cognitive psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, was tasked with developing a stink bomb for the Department of Defense. Her experiments found that people from different backgrounds and different parts of the world, who grew up smelling and eating different things, often completely disagreed about which smells were good or bad," NY Times "What's the World's Worst Smell?  Some odors are more heinous than others.  Then there's my Adidas shoes, Feb. 17, 2020"

Well, Ms. Dalton need not search for a universally accepted "World's Worst Smell" any longer.  After every tennis match, I would drive home, take my shoes off and put them outside in my balcony.  Then I would get the 3rd degree from whoever was in my car for the next few days - usually my two daughters - especially when I turned the A/C on.  When the deed was done, my elder daughter thanked my girlfriend for convincing me to discard the shoes as a "service to mankind".

June 5, 2022 update:

The next batch, also stinky but nowhere near the legendary one above.  Bye bye COVID companion: