I have a lot of shoes. I have outdoor soccer shoes (with cleats) and indoor soccer shoes (without cleats). I haven't worn either in years. I used to have a pair a baseball spikes (which I used for two seasons of softball), but I finally got rid of those last year. Ditto for the black dress shoes that never fit. I finally showed them the door after a decade.

I still have a pair of sneakers, a pair of Doc Martens and a pair of semi-dress shoes that I wear to work. And a pair of wool-lined slippers for keeping the feet warm in the winter. That's a lot of shoes.

But my favorite shoes are my sandals. I bought them six years ago in Duck, N.C. They are Tevas, but unlike your usual fabric-and-plastic Tevas, these have leather uppers and suede-covered insoles. Comfy and stylish.

Okay, so the suede started to peel after a couple of years. The actual insoles of the sandals are made of the same material as Crocs, so they are cushy and have never threatened to fall apart. The leather straps are even more handsome than they were when I bought them (leather is lovely the way it ages). What gave way, however, were the man-made materials.

The heel strap on these sandals was connected by Velcro. Velcro wears out, and in this case it wore out about three years ago. I think there were a total of two loops and two hooks left on either sandal, but they usually held. When they didn't, my sandals would fly out in front of me as I walked. I would simply slide the offender back on, find the pressure point in the Velcro and hope for the best. Usually that was good enough.

A couple weekends ago we decided to go camping after Saturday-morning soccer games. I realized that I'd left my shoes at home, but I was wearing my sandals. I'd walked thousands of miles in those sandals (no exaggeration), so they could handle one little camping trip with minimal hiking.

Alas. On my final approach to our campsite after an afternoon of amateur orienteering, my trail became a mud pit. I walked through without a care. But my left sandal didn't survive intact. One of the straps which attached between the insole and the sole detached. And while I could walk (gingerly) in this newly-loosened sandal, I knew the time had come to say goodbye.

Well, it will come. Soon enough. I wore those sandals throughout the rest of the trip (I had no choice) and I've worn them a couple of times since then. But that left sandal is toast. It is time to say goodbye.

Why is it so hard to let go of an inanimate object like a shoe? And why is it harder to let go of this shoe than my '92 Civic, a car I loved more than any other I've owned? I can't say. But I'm really bummed about this sandal. And even after going to four stores and looking for a replacement, I can't pull the trigger and buy something new.

Maybe my feet are more important to me than I think they are. Maybe I don't like change. Or maybe, for some reason, I really did love these sandals a lot more than I thought.

They were good sandals, after all. And if you've got a pair of good sandals, the rest of life tends to fall into place.

Jon Worley also needs new sneakers, but he's not nearly so worked up about them.