When I was little, I hated getting new shoes.

My mom often took me to this one children's shoe store, where we were always assisted by the same salesman.

I remember leaving the store with new shoes, on several occasions, that felt very strange and uncomfortable on my feet because they hadn't been broken in. I didn't like the feeling. I think I even cried about it a time or two.

In truth, at this stage in my life I am actually very ambivalent toward shoes. A couple of my friends, and my mom, I daresay, are obsessed with the various styles, materials and designs that they can broadcast on their feet. I suppose I was never quite as entranced.

A few weeks ago, upon starting my junior year of college, I threw away a pair of slip-on shoes; they were knockoffs of white Vans. Only they were not white. No. They were brown, gray, coffee-colored, probably a few other dark colors mixed in there; however, I can assure you they were white as snow when I purchased them two years ago.

I remember thinking as soon as I brought them home, "Okay, they're white. They must remain white."

This mentality lasted about a week, the first week of college, in fact. I went to several parties, a football game, and they were no longer white. Anyone who saw them after those first few weeks would not have guessed that they were brand new.

Nevertheless, as it turned out, these plain white, simple shoes, became my favorite pair. I wore them everywhere, to the point where, when going out to dinner at the end of my freshman year of college, a friend felt absolutely no remorse, saying, "Are you really wearing those again?"

I was.

They were comfortable, totally me, and quite honestly falling apart by the end of their first year.

So, when it came time to throw them away a couple weeks ago, my mom said, "They don't owe you a thing."

She was right.

Still —though I feel a little weird writing sentimentally about shoes— I thought back, when I threw them away, about the places they had been.

They came with me to my first day of college, an emergency room in Boston, and a graduation party at which I spilled coffee all over them.

They turned brown, largely, because two friends and I ran through a construction site after it had rained, and they were muddy and wet for several days after.

I accidentally knocked the left one into a lake and when I went over to a friend's house later that day her dog chewed on it.

They got a ton of sand in them when I wore them to beaches in New York and Chicago — sand, that I am convinced stayed with them until the very end.

I also realized that by the end of their tenure, they had taken on slightly different shapes. The top of the right one was slightly more angled because I pronate more on that side.

And so to that end, I offer an anecdote. Though I have no affinity for shoes in the general sense, and because I don't buy them often or fawn over them for their style, I think my appreciation for my shoes — some of which have long outlived their expectancy — is somewhat more personal.

I enjoy them only for the necessity that they are, and I wear them well — everywhere I go. They mark my path in the world, even if they do so invisibly, and they represent my many steps.

And so I will miss my off-white shoes as they have accompanied me on all my adventures.