In an effort to clean the albatross that is my bedroom, this past weekend I went through some of the items in my closet. In the process, I found many of the shoes from my youth. There were my snake skin cowboy boots, an item of fashion awesomeness that has yet to be matched. There were my Nike Air Charles Barkley USA Olympic basketball shoes circa 1992, which destroyed my feet when I wore them to Disney World on a family vacation one summer.

And then there were my blue baseball cleats…

It was the summer before my eighth grade year in school. On the way back home from a family vacation in Florida, we stopped by a Nike Outlet we spotted. It was a warehouse full of Nike products at discount prices. For a sports-obsessed, 14-year-old boy it was heaven.

I went straight to the baseball section of the warehouse. Nike batting gloves at the time were – and maybe still are – pretty mediocre, so I bypassed them pretty quickly.

Nike t-shirts? I can get those anywhere.

Wrist bands? No thanks.

Nike cleats? Yahtzee. We’ve hit the jackpot.

I perused the hundreds of different cleats in front of me. High tops, low tops, metal cleats, rubber cleats…they had it all. And then I saw them.

Two pairs of low-top, metal Nike Air cleats laid before me. They were professional grade, the kind major leaguers wear. They were made entirely of thick, quality leather – there wasn’t a spec of plastic or nylon to be found. In short, I had never seen cleats like these before. As if that wasn’t great enough, their colors were blue and silver.

What’s so great about blue and silver? Those were my school’s colors. And at the time, you couldn’t find blue cleats at the local sporting goods stores in town. Black was it.

And the clincher: The cleats cost only $9.99 a pair.

At that price, I knew that not only would my dad buy me a pair, he’d buy me both pairs if I asked him. And that’s what I did.

My dad, master of observation, pointed out something to me that I had failed to notice due to my excitement. The cleats were both size 13 1/2.

Now, that would have been the end of the story for most boys. But I had three things working for me: 1) I already had a size 12 shoe, 2) my powers of persuasion increase tenfold when I really want something, and 3) I really, really wanted those cleats.

I began to state my case to my dad.

“As a 14 year old who already has a size 12 shoe, it seems logical that my foot will continue to grow, correct?”

“Yes,” my dad replied.

“These cleats might be too big for me now, but that surely won’t always be the case, right?”

“Yes,” my dad agreed.

“And at such a low price, purchasing these cleats now, before I even need them, would save you a considerable amount of money down the road, right?”

On our drive back home, I took my cleats out of their boxes to admire them. “I will keep you forever,” I promised them.

“Someday, people all over the world will know of your greatness.”

The people over at humor-blogs are jealous of my snake skin boots.