Old shoes no more in Ghana

The smell of new running shoes is intoxicating to someone who loves to run.

And then there is the drama of choosing shoes that will help you reach goals. They're so light-weight, but will they make me faster? Will they keep my knees from aching? Will they minimize the damage done to my toenails? Will they keep my IT band from burning? Can they help reduce the pain of my plantar fasciitis?

And then, there is the obvious — just a plain, old love affair with a good-looking pair of shoes.

I don't use my running shoes for anything but running. When I was a kid, however, my "running shoes" were the shoes I went to school in, worked in, played in and, on occasion, wore under a dress to events my parents forced me to attend. They were simply "my shoes."

I didn't think much about the luxury of having a designated pair of running shoes until I met Tim Collings at the Dirty Dash 5K in June. He was asking — almost begging — for the shoes we'd all worn during the mud run. I ran in a pair of old running shoes that I had been using as gardening shoes. (I know: They are more specialty shoes. But in all honestly, running shoes are the most expensive footwear in my closet, so I try to recycle.)

My daughter and I rinsed our shoes as best we could and then we added them to the enormous pile of shoes that Collings and his colleagues had collected. Then they mentioned something about a barefoot 5K in the fall.

I thought about those shoes once or twice over the summer. (I had to convert a broken pair of crocs into my garden shoes.) And then I got a call from Collings.

It seemed my shoes, along with about 999 other pairs of used shoes, are now on their way to Ghana.

While I am pining over which new pair of running shoes to buy, there children are contemplating a long walk to school in bare feet.

"A lot of people don't even have shoes," said Collings of the African country. "They don't have that ability to just go buy a pair of shoes." In fact, finding a way to cover their feet is low on the priority list for some people. It takes a backseat to basic medical care, clean water and other essentials that we take for granted every day.

My youngest daughter has a congenital heart defect that would probably have ended her life somewhere in her mid-20s had she not had open-heart surgery. I live in a country where basic medical tests told me that when she was a few hours old. I have health insurance that helped me pay for life-saving, life-altering surgery, yearly exams and now a brace for scoliosis.