File under Feckless

I don't suppose any of my readers remember the strength shoe? A white sneaker with a little platform under each toe, it was to be worn during work outs and supposedly would improve your verticle leap by 4 to 8 inches. Here's the original, found in the depths of my parents' basement:







It might sound silly, but that promise was just too good for someone slapping the backboard on lay ups and yearning to grab the rim. So I plunked down $80 or so on a pair of these miracle workers (or I got them for Christmas, I can't recall) and as a thirteen year old began to strictly follow what can only be remembered as a series of demeaning exercises up and down my driveway, out on my street, and at the gym. You can see the sorts of things I did for the dream of dunking below. I almost think that this whole strength shoe operation was developed solely to get suburban kids the country over to hop, skip, and jump around like the fools that they were.

And hop, skip, and jump we did, following our exercise cards. If you look at the middle row here, all you need are jazz hands and this is a Fred Astaire number:





There was an awful lot of leaping that was done, which I shouldn't have been surprised at, all things considered, but I was:





As to the bottom row here, I'm not sure if the Charleston was what you were supposed to be doing, but if the guy in the illustration did it, I did it.





I ultimately don't know if the strength shoe increased my jumping ability - I lost interest in playing basketball soon after this, and my vertical leap somehow became less important to me. I can tell you what it did *not* increase, however - my friend quotient. Prancing around on what appear to the untrained eye to be little pogo shoes doesn't really help you out socially as you go into your freshman year of high school.

The end result, though, is I do think I became a better dancer.