Never, a list by Nancy Osborn

Never borrow your best friend's bicycle if you don't know how to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels.

Never pretend to yourself that you understand those dreadful word problems in algebra.

Never study astronomy if all you really want to do is gaze at the full moon.

Never try to follow an elaborate recipe for a main course if at heart you only love to bake bread.

Never count on being able to renew a library book you haven't finished, or worse, haven't even started.

Never buy beautiful journals in the hope that their elegance will draw forth beautiful writing.

Never expect that any kisses after the first one will be as delicious.

Never trust what your stomach is telling you when you are buying pastries.

Never imagine that you will ever reach the end of your To Do lists.

Never expect that the bulbs you plant in the fall will come up where you artfully planted them.

Never expect that your flowers will grow faster than the weeds.

Never imagine that your most cherished childhood memories are the same ones as your sisters'.

Never pass up the chance for corn on the cob or fresh strawberries.

Never hope that you'll be able to fit into those old jeans, stashed in the back of your closet.

Never delude yourself when times are hard that things will seem better in the morning.

Never have hope that an old lover will return.

Never turn your back on someone who has treated you cruelly.

Never think twice about smiling at someone — friend or stranger.

Never forget your water bottle and rain parka when hiking in the fall.

Never, ever, regret all those things you didn't do yesterday, last week, or earlier in your life.

Shoe List, by Deirdre Silverman

In elementary school, we had to wear shoes to school, then change to sneakers to go into the gym. Because I hadn’t gone to kindergarten, I was younger than the others and didn’t know how to tie my shoes, so I couldn’t make the change. For months, my teacher left me alone in the classroom while the other kids had phys ed.

Buying shoes with my father in the 1950s and being embarrassed by him using 1930s shoe salesman slang.

My father had been seriously injured in an accident, resulting in problems with his legs and feet. He developed a nightly shoe ritual, which I performed kneeling on the floor. I had to unlace his shoes, remove them—gently! — loosen his socks (disgusting), put slippers on his feet, place the shoes in position to air out for 24 hours, and insert wooden shoe trees in the shoes from the previous night. I did this five days a week for how many years?

The late '50s style of dying silk shoes to match a specific dress, and then obsessing about keeping them dry so the color didn’t run.

Boots: the sensuality of showing less skin

   Black vinyl high-heeled boots that ended several inches above my knees. I wore them with a hot pink mini-dress cut to the waist in front and back. Totally trashy '60s manbait.

   My favorite boots ever were black cowgirl boots with red and white stitching, until I sprained my ankle and had to walk a mile in them. I never wore them again.

   The boots I lost at Tai Chi last winter were old and beat up. In fact, I had planned to replace them. But once gone, they became irreplaceable. No other boots can match their comfort and function.

   Now I have duct tape on the toes of my Muck boots. It’s really ugly, but no one will mistake my boots for theirs.

Aurora Shoes: made only a few miles from here, are what I live in now

   Going with my daughter to the barn/factory outside of Aurora to buy “seconds” of Aurora Shoes. Cats wound around our legs and we grew drunk on the smell of leather. Later we had lunch at the Aurora Inn, looking at the sailboats on the lake, pretending we were ladies, which we weren’t, out for a perfect fall afternoon, which it was.

   Getting dressed in semi-darkness on a gloomy winter day and discovering, several hours after I got to work, that I was wearing one brown Aurora shoe and one black. It made my day.

   Having my favorite pair of Aurora shoes resoled and resurrected — pure joy.