N.B. Psychologists have proven what we already know, shoe tell us much about the wearer…

The Phluff Daddy from O’Neill, $18.

Your name is Kenny. Not Kenneth, Kenny, and you own only four pairs of the long pants, two of them blue jeans.

Your best friend in the whole world is the chocolate lab named Bo, who wears the red bandanna around his neck, limps from the little bit of doggy arthritis, and is the sort of chick magnet (although he seems to mostly draw only single-mom divorcees who work in diners, and college girls studying recreation science).

You spend most of your time riding your mountain bike around town, reading undergraduate philosophy books, or hanging out at the indie coffee shop downtown, talking to college girls who are studying recreation science.

You’re 36-years-old and you’ve never left this town. Why should you? You were born here, went to school here, and graduated from college here (English, ’98). You even live in the tiny, two-bedroom house your grandmother left you up in the Avenues, stretching out that legacy into infinity (if you can keep your expenses down).

Some mornings, while you’re eating your bacon and eggs in the harvest-yellow kitchen with the avocado green stove, you look at the newspaper and think that maybe you should sell that house and get out of that town.

But then Bo hobbles in and puts his nose on your bare leg beneath your cargo shorts, and you think “Not yet, boy. Now while you’re still around.”