Strength® shoes do not look like regular sneakers. They have a two-inch-tall, five-inch-wide rubber platform attached to the bottom of the toe of each shoe. This rubber platform is designed to overload the calves and Achilles tendons with six times the body's weight. The Strength® shoes, when used with an intense plyometric training system, promise to add five to ten inches to one's vertical leap, decrease the time of one's forty-yard dash by two-tenths of a second, and increase one's anaerobic capacity and power by five hundred percent.
   What follows is an account of how Strength® shoes changed my life.

07.24.93
After much haggling with my parents, Dad calls 800.451.5867 to order the $124.95 (plus $10 shipping & handling) pair of white Strength® shoes. A competing brand of rubber sole extensions that strap on to my sneakers are available for a price roughly $100 lower. However, these do not come with a video, and their advertisement promises only four to seven inches gain in vertical leap, rather than five to ten.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease. Hopefully, I will not miss two months of forgone allowances too much.

08.03.93
My Strength® shoes arrive in their oversized black one-piece, back-hinged shoebox. Included in the box are the eight-pound pair of shoes, nylon shoelaces, an exercise video, five step-by-step training cards illustrating the fifteen plyometric exercises designed to optimally increase stretching and strain of calf muscles, and a postcard to order other Strength® products.
   The exercises, which fall into the categories of hopping, running, and dancing, require significantly more effort than I have envisioned. While each routine seems novel on its own, I am told to do them back to back for thirty-sixty minutes every other day. After running in a manner that makes the heels of my feet slap my own butt for one hundred yards, I am to alternate short and long hops for fifty yards, then jog sideways while swiveling my hips one hundred eighty degrees back and forth like a flamenco dancer while also making sure not to trip over my eight-pound shoes for twenty-five yards. And so on for another twenty-five to fifty-five minutes.
   By paying an extra hundred dollars for the best equipment, I've expected this work basically to be done for me. How much does cat-like quickness and froggish jumping ability cost?
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

08.04.93
My Strength® shoes have been taken out of the box and put back fifteen times. My feet have felt the warmth of the "metatarsal support to insure proper fit and durability while protecting the Plantar and Flexor regions of the foot" exactly eight times. They fit wonderfully. I will jump higher, run faster, and hop quicker than my peers. But today it is raining.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

08.05.93
My Strength® shoes are virgins no more! Their non-marking abrasion-resistant rubber soles have experienced the weight of my athletic bulk. Their lightweight synthetic uppers have felt the stretch of my passionate exertion. Their "Air Mesh" tongues have swallowed my salty sweat.
   After two hundred yards of running in a manner that makes the heels of my feet slap my own butt, two hundred yards of running in a manner that makes my knees slap my nipples, one hundred yards of short-then-long hopping, seventy-five yards of sideways flamenco-but-not-tripping jogging, and thirty straight-up-in-place hops, I am quite tired. I have completed two thirds of the daily routine, and thus deserve my day off.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

08.07.93
Today's regimen calls again for a quarter-mile of nipple- and butt-bruising running, an ill-advised Spanish-dance-influenced dash, and several other awkward and inane methods of abusing my lower legs.
   Unfortunately, I found several recorded Beverly Hills 90210 episodes on an unmarked videotape, my favorite episodes. I didn't work out today. My legs feel a lot better, though.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

09.06.93
School has started. Each day, it is all I can do to go to class and watch television. I put my Strength® shoes in my closet.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

08.29.94
My sister goes to college. I get her room. I move my Strength® shoes to my new closet.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

07.08.95
My parents move from Kerckhoff Avenue in Fresno, Calif., to Ann Street in Lancaster, Pa. My Strength® shoes move from my closet in the old house to my closet in the new house.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

01.04.97
After my first semester of college, during which I watch several pick-up basketball games and perhaps participate in one, I decide again that it would be cool to dunk with grace, power, and ease. I remove my Strength® shoes from the closet of my room in my parents' house and place them in the closet of my room in Yoder dormitory, Goshen College.
   Over the next three years, my Strength® shoes move to various closets and basements of different dormitories, two-bedroom apartments, and vinyl sided houses that could not be rented to anyone but college students who are convinced a one-year lease is one of the most difficult transactions they will face in life. Occasionally, my Strength® shoes are laughed at by drunk people who stumble upon them at parties.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

08.30.00
I move back into my parents' house. My Strength® shoes move back into the closet of my room in my parents' house.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

01.03.01
My Strength® shoes move from the closet of my room in my parents' house into the hall closet of the apartment I share with my girlfriend on South Graham Street in Pittsburgh.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

05.24.01
I play a game of basketball with some friends. I do not dunk.

06.02.01
I prepare to advertise my Strength® shoes in the local PennySaver. If I sell them for twenty-five dollars or less, the advertisement will be free.
   At my girlfriend's behest, I search eBay.com for Strength® shoes. There are fourteen pairs listed for sale, none in my size twelve. Bids range from $9.99 to $75. Under the username BigBigJumper, I put my Strength® shoes up for auction. Though I cannot offer a photograph of the merchandise, I decide that I must use the one hundred words allotted for a product description to stir a furious desire in the heart of any prospective bidder. I come up with a slogan: "Get yourself some hops." I think it stands best alone.
   My auction will last seven days, and I will not take less than $85.
   Soon, some lucky bidder will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

06.09.01
My Strength® shoes are not purchased. The highest bid is $62.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease.

03.27.02
My Strength® shoes move from the hall closet of the apartment I share with my girlfriend at South Graham Street to the basement of the house I purchased with my girlfriend on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh.
   Soon, I will dunk with grace, power, and ease—or place a tempting advertisement in the PennySaver.

All statistics found at www.Strength-Systems.com.

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