Seven Pairs of Shoes

The kids are still in flip-flops. Flip-flop season has stretched into leaf raking season. It’s still warm enough in Smallville to get away with this convenient footwear but just barely, so today I took inventory.

Charlie needs sneakers. I don’t think I’ll bother with dress shoes. A conservative pair of tennis shoes will cover for church and play. Claire has dress shoes. She just needs sneakers. Faith, Lauren and John need both. Wow, we have a lot of slippers!

For some reason my kids are big fans of slippers. They don’t really wear them around the house, they’d rather go barefoot, but I do catch them wearing them in the yard and sometimes Charlie likes to wear his to the library.

We piled into the car this afternoon and drove to Payless in search of eight pairs of shoes. The store manager’s eyes lit up as Stuart herded everyone through the entrance.

“Everybody take off your shoes and put on your socks. I need a general idea of what size you are. Somebody go ask the clerk if she knows where the foot ruler is. When you find out your size please remember it. I can’t keep track of all of your measurements.”

The children wriggled into their socks, put their feet down to be measured and then scattered in search of their size. Claire pulled down a pair of light blue Tinkerbelle sneakers in size 13. Too small.

“How ‘bout these white and silver ones?”

Perfect. Claire brought them up to the counter. She’s my decisive one and the whole process took about five minutes.

Stuart helped Charlie into some brown sneakers.

“Hon, did you see these blue ones? They would go well with all of his clothes.”

The last time I saw him, Stuart was helping Charlie into a pair of blue 9 1/2s.
Good. Two kids down.

The size-two section had some boy’s sneakers, sandals on clearance and a couple of pairs of Crocs. Faith struck out on everything.

“We’ll try Wal-Mart next, honey. Right after we leave here. I promise.”

Stuart and Charlie brought Charlie’s box up to the counter and Stuart moved on to help John. No luck with the sneakers but they snagged an awesome pair of casual dress shoes and added them to the growing pile.

John and Faith came to help Lauren choose dress shoes. Her foot size expanded beyond the children’s department over the summer. We surveyed the expanse of funky, womanly shoes. A little too funky and womanly for my ten year old.

“Get these!" John held out a pair with three inch soles.
“How ‘bout these glittery ones? Look Lauren! Camouflage heels!” Faith pulled some extra tacky shoes out of their boxes.

Lauren ignored her siblings and the dress shoes and picked out a pair of sneakers. We trouped to the front and bought two and got two for half price and headed for Wal-Mart where things got ugly pretty quickly.

Faith is my finicky child and this time even though we found lots of size twos they did not meet her specifications. I held out a pair of pink tennis shoes.

“I don’t like pink, Mom. BLAAAUGH!
“They have Velcro and they’re cute.”
“BLAAUGH!”
“How bout these?”
“They’re still pink!”
“Just a speck. They’re mostly brown.”
“BLAAAUGH!”
“Would you stop making barfing noises and make a decision!”

We struck out again with the sneakers and only decided on a pair of black Mary Janes after a long argument. Faith had issues with their wavy decorative stitching.

John found sneakers and then harassed Lauren as she searched for a pair of dress shoes.

“There’s a black pair. There’s another black pair. Black, black, black, black….”
“John will you hush and let us concentrate!”

Lauren slipped on a comfy pair of Doctor Scholl's and grinned. We were done.

The ride home was quiet except for the sounds of rustling boxes and paper and socks and shoe tying. When the kids got out of the car, I noticed Charlie’s new shoes for the first time. They were blinking. That’s funny. I didn't notice that the blue sneakers blinked. I looked closer. A giant Spiderman head peered from each side.

“Honey! You got him Spiderman sneakers!?”
“They were cheaper. And he wanted them.”

So much for conservative, go-with-anything shoes. Charlie’s happy. Blinky too. Shoe shopping is almost over for another season. I won’t prolong it with returns.