I headed quickly down the road. squeak.squeak. Turned the corner and pulled my collars up and adjusted my trousers, again. I was nervous as I always was on a first date.squeak.squeak. I carried on for a bit lost in my own thinking about the things I would say to her when it suddenly dawned on me. squeak.squeak.What the fuck was that noise? I then realized that I had been so lost in my own thinking that I had put on my damn trainers that squeaked. I was about half a block away from where I was to meet my date and suddenly stopped. I couldn’t go back now and put on the shoes I was too far away and would be late, way too late. I wondered for a while if there was a way that I could walk that would reduce the squeak to a muted one that would almost be imperceptible to the ear. Certainly to the point that I could have excused the squeak as being something else or belonging to someone else. I was on a clear stretch of path with not too many people passing by so I practised walking slow, real slow. Squeak.Squeak. It nearly went away but I was walking so slow it would appear that I would be approaching my date in slow motion which might appear romantic for one minute, while we both smiled at each other, but as the smiles faded there could still be another five minutes as I approached my date looking like I was Neil Armstrong on the moon. The painful silence after the approach would speak volumes of her opinion about me. I tried a really quick walk, almost a run, but the squeak went up a pitch to almost like a scream. If I sprinted around the corner towards her with a scream coming from my feet, speed and confusion could be on my side, but I could terrify her. I started to practice a combination of both and felt like a terrible Gazelle. Normally Gazelle’s are graceful creatures that bounce across the Sahara exuding confidence and style but my gazelle would have kept the others back and my slow ass would be a mating call to many a lion in the vicinity. While I was practising the walk another man passed me by. ‘What’s up brother?’, ‘Oh not much. I’m just heading out on my first date and realized my trainer’s squeak.’ He looked at me, ‘What the fuck are you wearing squeaky trainers for dude.No one does that, where are your shoes?’ I told him about the shoes and he stayed for a while practising the gazelle method but he disagreed. ‘You need to approach her like a Tiger?’, ‘A Tiger? Really?’, ‘What’s the distance between the corner and the girl’s table?’ I reckoned about ten feet. ‘That would be two Tiger jumps. So fast she would not know what hit her and then start the questions right away before she has a chance to understand why you were moving so quick or wearing shoes that squeaked?’, ‘Damn you’re right. So right.’ The man walked of and I turned around to walk towards the corner and meet my date. squeak.squeak. I glanced around the corner but she had gone.