Full disclosure: I know nothing about the science of sportswear, and even less about fashion. What I do know is that I love my Converse Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers, and I am confident that the aforementioned fields of knowledge are tangential, at best, to an appreciation of Chucks.

Though they were state-of-the-art athletic wear upon their initial release in 1917 (Chuck Taylor, a hoops star of the day, didn’t get his name on them until 1923) and continued to adorn NBA players’ feet as late as the 1970s, contemporary engineering has made the no-support canvas shoes laughably obsolete as performance gear. As for their fashion status, well, fashion is fickle, and I’d imagine in some years they’re more favored than others; I hold them dear not because of any ephemeral statement they make, but because of the statements they don’t make, because they are so peacefully nonpartisan.

In the early years of my adolescence I wore the sort of big, puffy basketball shoes advertised as truly beneficial to one’s game (“gunboats,” my mom liked to call them). When I was 15 my family moved from a liberal Boston suburb to central Florida, quite a culture shock for me, and in my maladaptation I only managed to make one friend, a good-hearted punk who shared my petulant disdain for our school, and who wore Chucks. Something in my mind clicked and I soon followed suit, driven by toadyish imitation of my only ally, yes, but also by a far more elemental draw: the gunboats I’d been wearing made a loud, and absurd, statement of athletic prowess, but in Chucks suddenly I seemed to have found a shoe that didn’t promise more than it, or I, was going to deliver. They were cool, to be sure, but not so cool as to proclaim myself cool (a la Doc Martens, at that time), which I could not have attempted without blushing from embarrassment.

My approach to wardrobe has remained, alas, essentially unaltered since I was 15. I’ve certainly received loads of well-meaning fashion advice in the many years since, but the Chucks have always escaped derision – they are the one component of my uniform that seems to say “I don’t care how I look” in a socially acceptable, even appealing way, as opposed to the “I don’t care how I look” that reads as an insult to all those who do care.

It should be noted that I wear black lowtop Chucks. I started out as a high-top man (clinging, maybe, to the notion that I might play basketball in them someday), but somewhere circa college I switched to the lows, which felt like lowering my voice even further, from a mumble to a murmur. As for the color, I have never considered changing from black. The multicolored alternatives that Converse began offering in the 1960s are well and good – and on women often terrifically alluring, as they seem to denote playfulness conjoined with around-the-way-girl approachability – but colors and patterns are obviously attention-getters, which run contrary to my goals, and I believe to the truest nature of Chucks.

Any politician would be driven delirious with envy by Chucks’ ability to quietly win over hundreds of millions of Americans without actually committing to any philosophy whatsoever. Perhaps their longevity is due to something about the design, some Jungian signifier that taps into the collective unconscious and comforts us? Or maybe it’s just their affordability that keeps them in favor? Dumb luck also seems a solid possibility, but honestly it hardly matters – Chucks’ origin is now shrouded so thoroughly in the mists of history that it seems only slightly hyperbolic to suggest that they always have been and always shall be. (Yes, even if Converse is now owned by Nike, and, quite depressingly, the new batches of Chucks are coming from Indonesia – certainly a blow to their apolitical nature.) Chucks are mixed deep and low into the culture, a metronomic beat that you could miss if you’re not looking for it. Flip the channels on your television and check it out: there’s Sylvester Stallone wearing them in “Rocky I” – probably not the best shoes to train in, but then that’s what made him an underdog. And there’s Michael J. Fox sporting them in “Back to the Future” – so that when he goes back to 1955, he doesn’t have to change shoes!

I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers; from the ankles up, I’m as confused as anyone. I’m sure in years to come the winds of change will shove me from any and all sides – but I will always be steadied by the knowledge that my feet are in my Chucks, my Chucks are on the ground, and some things never, ever change.