A pair of trainers

1985.  Not just any pair of trainers; but the lodestar.  There they are, on the back of LL Cool J’s Radio: mark 1 Air Jordans.  Red and black and attitude, and that advert with Jordan taking off like a 747: “They say man wasn’t born to fly...”

Then, the opposite of cool: knowing the only way I would get a pair was my mother promising to buy them - at the ludicrous price of £50 - if I got straight A’s in my ‘O’ levels. 

In the Stanford Marshmallow experiment, toddlers were given a sweet and told that if they could refrain from eating it, they could have another.  Me, I want that sweet now.   

So I didn’t get straight ‘A’s, and I ended up wearing my black Nike Vandals long after they didn’t fit, giving me an ingrown toenail; Reese wore those in Terminator, so they couldn’t be all bad. But they weren’t mark 1 Air Jordans... And if you know what I’m talking about, then you know what I’m talking about.