Our kids keep us running from sports, to birthdays, to holidays and I finally figured out that I’m in the wrong business. I should have been a shoe salesman. My daughter, “L,” dances ballet, plays soccer and appears to be on a course to pass Imelda Marcos for her shoe collection.
My son, “B,” plays soccer, started wrestling, basketball, baseball and if it’s not bad enough that each of those sports requires different footwear, it appears as if his feet have taken his body hostage. His feet must be screaming, “Feed Me Seymour,” like the plant from “Little Shop of Horrors,” because they’re growing like weeds! Kid’s shoes have always been good business, but now it has become big fashion as well. I took B for shoes last month. No, I took him for sneakers last month. He wouldn’t entertain the idea of wearing real shoes. We went by Stride Rite, rendezvoused at the Foot Locker, and meandered into Nordstrom and into one or two more sneaker stores. There were so many colors; I nearly collapsed into an epileptic seizure. They also had lines of doctors standing by to remove your kidneys so you could actually afford to buy those shoes.
We had plenty of fashion opportunities in my youth too. You could have brown shoes or black shoes. Sneakers were white. It’s not that I’m jealous or anything; I have lots of shoes too, but mine can be repaired.
Kid’s shoes have a shelf life equal to that of a fruit fly. They grow out of them, grind them down, and run them through ponds, puddles and guck. What gets me now, is that none of these shoes have arch supports. It’s bad enough that parents pour money into their kid’s shoes, but then you have to buy additional arch supports. If that isn’t crazy, freaking, sadistic genius, then I don’t know what is.
I love it when you go and spend $50 up on your kid’s shoes—and they run around in Adidas flip flops with no socks in 30 degree weather. Then they complain about having cold feet.
You can’t make up things like that. Velcro has changed things for shoes too. Velcro relieves us of the short term need to teach our children how to tie shoelaces. Long term, Velcro has made us lazy and delayed children learning to tie their own laces. I don’t know about you, but I think L should really know how to tie her own laces by the time she reaches college. And Velcro high heels? Oooh La La, gentleman. I can’t wait to see our kids in them!