American Studies: Photo Assignment 1

"I don't have to pick those up, they're not mine!"

This photo is one that I took a couples days ago after getting home from school, entering through the garage door, and laying my eyes upon a sight I was very accustomed to: A collection of shoes that belonged to me and my siblings, carelessly tossed off before we retired to our separate homework zones. But of course you might be wondering, how does a picture of lazy teenager's shoes reflect on America? that is a question that, I will be honest, I took some liberties with. because, here's the thing, really, all this is is a picture of some overpriced shoes that I took with my standard phone camera. This photograph, if you look at it, contains a variety of shoes, all facing in different directions, all different colors and styles, so different, yet smushed together. I think that America suffers a bit from this "water we live in syndrome" (If I may be so blatant in relating this to class). The groups like the Westboro baptist church, NRA, anti NRA people, vegans, non vegans, conservatives, and liberals, all of us sometimes seem to forget that the other half does live, and even though we are all genetically and emotionally human beings living in the same world, we don't always think about that. I was at work the other day, and the guy I work with, Manuel, was going to the sink to fill up the caramel heater, and he said "You know, we are really lucky to have running water" And I hadn't really thought about that before, but it is true that while me and my friends are trying to find the coldest fountain(in the music building apparently), there are other people sitting in the house or the senate, trying to decide whether or not we want to blow somebody else up. And, back in Syria, and Russia, and Iran, and Iraq, there are people too, people who just want to watch their favorite TV shows and get their morning coffee. And, at some point, all of the pairs of shoes in the world will have to face each other and the American flip flop will say to the Russian sneaker: how's it going down there?