The Walk

Everyone waits on a walk
Some are long and some small
But all of them tall
And everyone must make a choice
Will I go for it all, and possibly fall
The tightrope is thin
I could possibly win on the walk
The Walk, Hanson


As the date of the concert grew closer I began to frequent hanson.net more and more, first just reading what the band had been up to over the past years, watching the Strong Enough to Break documentary, reading the messages on the forums, and eventually joining the fan club. Before the first show of the tour, the band announced that they would begin to do one mile barefoot walks before each one of their shows. These walks would be to show that we could see what children all over the world go through every day because they did not have shoes. Hanson partnered with TOMS Shoes, a company who give a pair of shoes to a child in poverty for every pair they sold.
This whole idea started because of a company, Docvia, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Docvia created a mobile technology that could be used to connect remote patients with regional medical providers in South Africa and then donated this technology to the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa. Hanson decided to take a trip to South Africa to see and learn as much as they could. While there, they recorded a couple songs for their album, The Walk, with a children's choir in Soweto. One of those songs, Great Divide, was put on iTunes and all the proceeds go to the hospital in South Africa. When the band got back to the states, they had a passion and a need to do something about the conditions they witnessed first-hand in Africa. They partnered with TOMS and the walks began.
The idea of the walk was new and exciting to me. The fact that the band I had always obsessed over was going to be walking through the streets of Tulsa with tons of fans was a real high point. (Please keep in mind that I had never met Hanson at this point.) I found a few other Hanson fans on campus and we decided we would go together. (My friend canceled on me.)
The day of the concert, I checked hanson.net for the time and location of the walk and saw that the show for that evening was canceled. I couldn't speak. I knew that Hanson had never canceled anything unless it was something serious that was wrong. It turns out Isaac Hanson had a medical emergency the night before, and it was a life or death situation. They announced that they would still walk so I skipped my Biology lab and headed to the walk. When I got there, hundreds of fans were already waiting in front of Cain's Ballroom. Taylor and Zac came out and I could not move. Two-thirds of the band that I had been a fan of since I was eight years old was standing 20 feet away. It was all I could I do not to resort to my teeny-bopper 13-year-old self and scream and jump up and down.
Taylor talked to the crowd and a few television cameras for about ten minutes and then the walk started. I took off my shoes and started. At first, I was star-struck. Zac (always had been my favorite) walked right past me and almost bumped into me. After the initial inability to do anything but put one foot in front of the other, I began to think about why I was walking. It was for people, like me, on the other side of the world, who did not have what I had: the shoes in my hand, the car I had driven to the walk, the lunch I had eaten that day, the class I had skipped, my health, my parents, my life. It kind of hit me all at once that I was living in a bubble, a bubble created to keep myself from thinking about suffering and poverty all over the world. It may be depressing but it is the truth, it is real. I remember that I almost began to cry when this hit me and for a split second, I was the only one on the streets of Tulsa. I was their alone because I did not feel like many people had this realization and were walking around in their own little bubble. When the rest of the walkers and Taylor and Zac Hanson came back into focus, I started looking around to see if anyone else had an extremely zoned out look on their face. Some looked as if they were reflecting on the experience but most were just tripping over each other to get within 10 feet of anyone with the last name Hanson. (By the way, in spite of my state of solemn realization, this was hilarious.) As the walk ended, Taylor announced that they would be signing autographs and taking pictures but first he explained that the opening bands were still going to play a show that night and TOMS Shoes would be sold. I got my picture taken with both brothers (hey, I didn't know if I would ever get this opportunity again!) and that night I bought my first pair of TOMS Shoes.
Once I got back to my apartment, I began to think about my realization earlier that day and got a little depressed again. This depression did not last long because I decided that because I had been privileged through my life that I had the responsibility to save the world.