EVIL CARNIVAL STEALS SOULS OF CHILDREN AND NO ONE CARES

Walking into Barstool HQ for my first day reminded me of walking into the first day school. Which gave me flashbacks to how your mom would take you back to school shopping as a kid and get new outfits.

For me, back to school shopping was always a traumatic experience. My mom would never take my brother and I to the name brand clothing stores for cool gear to make it easier to make shallow friends with material goods. That’s honestly all I ever wanted. Instead my mom had been stacking Kohl’s cash since Christmas so when the first day of school hit my wardrobe could consist of generic plane t-shirts and if I was lucky a few And 1 shirts with the creepy faceless cartoon on it saying some comment like, IS THAT MY JUMPER IN YOUR EYE?

Got ‘em.

The clothes weren’t the worst part. No 5th grader really ever pays attention to clothes. Your shoe’s though? Your the shoes made a statement on the playground.

I was never lucky enough to go shop at Kohl’s for shoes, instead my mom would take us to the most embarrassing place on planet Earth, Shoe Carnival.

Shoe Carnival was a carnival themed discount shoe store in the midwest that sold shoes by disguising itself as an exciting carnival. Similar to how Pennywise the clown from the movie IT disguises itself as a clown when in reality its some sort of evil creature from another dimension designed to suck the souls out of children to sustain life.

Like a moth to a flame (great memes) the store would pull you in with their bright lights, spinning discount wheel, and of course the shoe carnival DJ booth (which I think is where most sound cloud rappers came from.) All of it was designed to distract kids from how bad their generic shoes looked until they got back into their mom’s car with their shitty shoes. Shoe Carnival’s slogan is “A Surprise in Store” , and that surprise is getting roasted on your first day back.

6th grade was a bad year for me because I must have been distracted by whatever “Now That’s What I Call Music 37 CD” the carnival DJ was playing because I picked out maybe my worst pair of shoes ever.

I got to my first day of 6th grade and all my friends had on the new $120 Allen Iversons. They looked incredible. They looked like wealth. The sleek design, a zipper to tuck the laces in, and if you turned it over a badass picture of The Answer himself. I couldn’t help but stare. I needed those shoes. Mine couldn’t compete. I needed those kicks. I would have ripped their shoes off with the foot inside and rubbed them on my skin like I was Rex Ryan living out some deep rooted sexual fantasy.

My shoes? My shoes were a $35 pair of Lugz Birdman #1 Stunna’s I got for about $30 since the DJ let me spin the wheel for 15% off. This might have actually been a step up from the Van’s Airwalks I got the previous year, but there was no sleek design, no zipper to tuck the laces in, and when you turned my Lugz over there was no badass picture of Allen Iverson, just a graffiti like logo that simply said #1 STUNNA across the entire sole of the shoe. But, I wasn’t a #1 STUNNA , I was just a big phoney.

I’m not afraid to say it. My biggest goal here right now isn’t to make hilarious sketches with Francis, to write entertaining blogs, or even to get back on radio. No. My main goal is to get on Kicks in the Office instagram with a pair of Allen Iverson’s so that my 6th grade classmates can see me. Pettiness drives me. At least I’ll never fail for flying too close to the sun. 

In order to pay my debt to society (my 6th grade class) I was forced to be funny for the remainder of my grade school and high school career and hope people would forget about how much of a loser I was for wearing Bird Man’s for the first 6 months the school year. It all worked out.

SIDENOTE: Our research department (Thanks @BarstoolNate, also Happy Birthday) discovered that since the Lugz incident Shoe Carnival has stepped away from tricking poor kids with the circus theme and DJ’s and is just sticking to selling cheap shoes.