Those shoes

A.: Hello?
Mom: Why is your voice like that? Were you sleeping?
A.: No, I'm just tired.
Mom: Why are you tired?
A.: Because I am.
Mom: I have these shoes here. Are they yours?
A.: Um...
Mom: They're brown... I really don't know how else to describe them.
A.: Does this have to be resolved now?
Mom: Well, I'm giving a bunch of stuff away.
A.: If they don't fit you, give them away. I clearly won't miss them since I don't know what shoes you're talking about.
Mom: But they're kind of cute...
A.: I don't need them.
Mom: They look comfortable, too.
A.: I have enough pairs of shoes.

That's a slightly dishonest statement. I mean, objectively, I probably have enough pairs of shoes... but I believe that up to a certain point (for eg Imelda Marcos), one can never have too many shoes. However, I was pretty sure I did not need these shoes.

This back-and-forth went on for a while. The funny thing is, when it's a question of my books, I'm the one convincing my mother not to throw them out, and she can't understand why I'd want to keep them.

In spite of my assurances that I wouldn't need these shoes, mom insisted that she would keep them for me anyway. Which means next trip to Boston, she'll aggressively insist that I take them with me, even though I'll have seen them and likely be able to say for certain that I'll not need them. That will hardly influence her belief that I might want them. I mean, she called to ask me whether or not she could give them away, and decided not to even though I told her the opposite.