Last Friday, the one thing I have been anticipating for months, but could never really be prepared for until it happens, happened: my slippers broke.

Specifically, my right slipper. It was an old pair - those cheap-ish rubber slippers that you use for quick errands, like picking up deliveries from the lobby or, in this case, going to the laundry. That's the first sucky bit. I wasn't home. I was at the laundry. Well, I was getting my laundry done. I wasn't waiting there: I was at the 7-Eleven downstairs buying a drink. Must've shifted my foot the wrong way and, just like that, my right slipper snapped and it's pretty much unusable. I had to walk back to the laundry with one slipper. And then I had to wait an hour and a half - a wash cycle, a dry cycle and me folding the clothes - before I could go back home. I decided to do so barefoot, because, well, why bother walking with just one slipper when you can walk with nothing at all? It doesn't really matter anyway, right?

The security guard at the entrance asked me why I was walking barefoot. I guess it's illegal, for me to walk into a building I have a unit in with no footwear, because they're broken. So much for being home.

I saw this day coming. I've had that pair of slippers for roughly three years now. Yes, I bought it during the old times. I remember the trip to the mall to get a pair - and the accompanying struggle to find something my size - and then going back to the flat and leaving it here. Maybe it was four years ago? I definitely bought it before I even moved in here, back when I only stayed one week, then two weeks, then six weeks at a time.

A few weeks ago it occurred to me that that pair of slippers is getting a little more worn than it should be, and that, some time soon, it would break. What better excuse do you need to get new slippers? Maybe get an expensive pair. Not because it's expensive, but because I can use it for longer walks. I can just wear slippers to the grocery. I mean, I have done that with this pair, but this pair always felt like the pair you use for really short trips at home, not for errands in slightly farther places. But it's a distinction nobody really cares about. I have used these slippers to buy dinner at a KFC that's ten minutes by foot. In a mall. Heck, I have used these slippers to pretty much walk in one direction to buy dinner, only to realize the store isn't there, so I walked in the other direction, to another mall, to get it. That's an hour of walking, and two malls, and the busy roads on the fringes of Mandaluyong and Pasig. What I'm saying is, they have served me well. And now, I have to throw them away.

I'm not particularly sentimental about it. They're rubber slippers, after all. They're supposed to break at some point, and besides, I've already beaten the shit out of it. But it's only the right slipper that broke. The left slipper's perfectly fine, but now it too has to be thrown away, because it's of no use. What, just because the other guy fucked up, I get fucked, too? No fair! Don't throw me away! I can kill cockroaches! There's a fuckload of cockroaches in the flat, and I can help you kill them!

Over the weekend I ended up buying a pair of Adilettes. Shalla recommended them the very first time it occurred to me that I have to buy slippers soon. It's perfect for my needs, my long-distance errand needs. And so, in the plastic it came with, my broken right slipper, and a perfectly fine left one, are banished to some landfill. We suck at recycling as a society. Only the rich and imaginative get a second chance. The rest of us die.