I just spent $400 on shoes.

No joke.

I'm not generally a shoes-buying kind of person. I'm also notoriously thrifty when it comes to clothes. Thrift-store thrifty. So why did I just spend $400 on shoes?

[Voice: Director from Panzer] It all started ten years ago... [/voice]... okay, actually it was about 15 years ago. When Mom used to take me to the shoe store, she'd pick a cheap brand and say that I could have any pair of shoes there. I'd pick a color I liked or a design I thought was cool, and it was all good.

Then my feet started getting bigger. Once I hit size 13, my choice was narrowed to a black pair, a white pair, and maybe a purple pair (which is to say, as a self-respecting guy, I had two choices). When I hit size fourteen, we'd have to ask if they even had any, and if they did, those would be my new shoes (unless they were purple). Otherwise, go to the next store and ask that question. After I had worn 14s for a couple years, shoe stores started carrying bigger sizes so the variety wasn't so bad.

Then my feet grew another inch.

Even so, there were stores that I knew carried big shoes and I could generally find what something somewhere, and usually not in purple. A couple years ago, that started changing. Suddenly they were all capping out at 14. But have no fear because the Internet was here! I could still find the shoes I wanted at good prices at Payless's site. I got my current job where steel-toed boots are required so I got myself a pair of Stanley Steel-toed boots for roughly $40 a piece. Good deal, cause I was never in my life going to pay $50.

Well, with Stanley boots, you get what you pay for, which isn't much. They started falling apart pretty quickly and right now are barely presentable. My old CAT boots lasted about 4 years, these obviously weren't going to make it that long. So I went back to Payless to see if they had anything perhaps a little better. No luck. Worse than no luck, they didn't even have the Stanleys anymore. They'd discontinued almost their entire line above 13. So for the last three months, I haven't had a clue where to get steel-toed, size 15 boots. My self-important $50 was no longer such a barrier. I'd pay anything if I could just find them. Supply and demand is a bitch.

I thought I had a lead when my Aunt Martha told me that she sold cop supplies and she might have some big shoes with some steel toes. She had some SWAT boots that were pretty cool, but none in my size, of course. They would have been nice, but I'd like a dark brown pair like my old CATs and cop shoes just come in black. Then again, at this point, who was I to complain about color? My current boots are tan for chrissakes.

Then, as she often does, Mom came to my rescue. She sent me a link to Zappo.com. It was like being 10 years old again with size 10 shoes all over again. Dozens of kinds of boots. Heck, I could even get a new pair of tennis shoes! (my current pair was purchased in 1995). The more I looked, the more I wanted. Oooh, oooh, brown CATs!! Oooh, oooh, oooh, black CATs!! Wow! Harley Davidson boots! Badass!! Wait, do I really need them? I'd only get to wear them when I go to a club or something and am wearing black. Harrumph. I shall buy them. Why?

Because I can!!!!

Or, to put it more technically, any economist can tell you as the supply decreases and demand stays constant (increases, actually, since the average shoe size is getting larger), the gap between the two will be met with a corresponding rise in price. However, with each pair of shoes purchased, the utility of an additional pair dwindles. A second pair of shoes is not as valuable as having one, the third less valuable than the second, and so on. Therefore, what was going through my mind when I was ostensibly thinking "Dude! Harley Davidson boots!" was actually something along the lines of "After careful analysis, I have come to the conclusion that despite the rise in price to a previously considered obscene amount of money, and even considering the dwindling utility of yet another pair of shoes, the marginalized utility (and therefore decreased demand, on a micro level) is still greater than the increase in cost, and when utility is greater than cost, I'm getting Harley Davidson boots.

Because I can!!!!