Jazz Shoes

I bought my first ever pair of jazz shoes in highschool. I was in theatre at that time, and my extracurriculars were consumed with rehearsals for one show or another. Since you can't (at least the ladies in the show) wear sneakers or regular shoes for dancing in the musicals, we were required to buy one pair of jazz shoes and one pair of character shoes (fancy heels that were specific for dancing). Black of course so that no matter what we were wearing the shoes would automatically match. Since I had never taken a dance class before, when I bought those shoes I had no idea what I was doing. I walked into the dance shop, looked around for something with the label "jazz shoes", tried on some random black pair and walked out with my new shoes. They were the kind with split soles and laces.
I have been wearing those same shoes since highschool for all of my dance related activities. I have been wearing them to my current dance classes, and continued to wear them even after one of the damn cats chewed half of one of the laces off.. which made tying them tricky. They were broken in, comfy, and finally molded to the sizes and shapes of my feet. Last week in the middle of my dance movements class, I looked down and noticed this nice slice right above my big toe on my right foot. Damn. I realized that I was wearing out my first pair of jazz shoes. Time to get new ones. The problem is that I am not 100% symmetrical. It usually doesn't bother me, but my right foot is 1/2 size bigger than my left. In normal sneakers or sandals this isn't a problem, but in shoes that are supposed to be nice and snug around the shape of the foot, it causes quite a bit of discomfort. So before class yesterday I bought new split sole slip ons (no laces to chew, cats!!) and wore my mismatching sized shoes to class. They are quite comfy this way, and it works out well.

And yet, I can't quite bear to take my worn out shoes out of the passenger seat of my car.