Well, maybe not:
Sitting in her living room in Tooele, a few days before she won the contest for the stinkiest shoes in America, 13-year-old Katharine Tuck seemed quietly confident.
..."A girl today told me I needed to get new shoes," Katharine said. She replied that she had to keep wearing this pair — scuffing them and forgoing socks to make them even rattier — because on March 20 she'd be taking part in a national contest, the 32nd annual Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest. Katharine also told her classmate, "The winner gets $2,500."
...Her mother, Paula, notes that Katharine is an honor student and that she followed the rules of the contest quite scrupulously. Katharine knew her shoes would be judged on not just smell but on appearance of tongue, soles, laces, eyelets and the like. And she knew she could not take a knife or a saw to the shoes, that she had to let them wear out by doing what kids her age would naturally do.
So she rode her bike, dragging her toes into the stop, as kids will do. And she helped her mom in the garden, and the shoes got muddy and wet. And she wore them to school, day after day, without socks. And who knows, she may even have strolled the shores of the Great Salt Lake, delicately dipping her feet into the decaying brine shrimp.
...She reported by telephone to the Deseret Morning News after her win, saying she was hopeful when the head judge, a rocket specialist with NASA, had a look of disgust on his face as he smelled her shoes.
Sure enough, after the judges discussed the shoes for what Katharine said seemed to be about three minutes, she was declared the winner.
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