Four Calling Birds: The Shoe's on the Other Foot

How do you stop children from growing up so fast? I am not talking about not believing in Santa Claus or understanding sarcasm or even the subtle humor of a particularly randy episode of “Modern Family.” I mean actual physical growth. Slow it down, kids. What is the big hurry?

My baby daughter, S, who will only be nine for another month, announced to me this afternoon on the way to her dance class that she needs new jazz shoes. Jazz shoes. These are not the kind of shoes you can get at BOGO sale at the Payless. Not only does one pair cost as much her entire shoe wardrobe when she was five, but we can only purchase them at a dance supply store, which is the dancy equivalent of Home Depot. I don’t want spend my money or my time in either business, and I have no idea what to do with anything from either one once I get it home.

Shoe shopping with S is worse than going to a funeral home. My kid has a thing about shoes, but the opposite thing from me, which is to say, she hates them. She doesn’t like picking them out, trying them on, bringing them home, or wearing them. She doesn’t want to leave the store in her new pair of kicks or show them off to her friends. She wants her old shoes to fit forever; she is the Peter Pan of footwear.

Mostly, she doesn’t want to accept that as her feet grow larger, she has to deal with things like laces instead of Velcro, or that shoes for bigger feet no longer glow in the dark or light up or make noises or do any of the other things that little kid shoes do. To top it off, she has my husband’s feet, poor thing. Narrow at the heel and wide across the toe, not unlike duck feet, only with no webbing between the toes. Shoes don’t fit well on duck feet. Have you seen Daisy Duck’s pumps? Talk about gaping.

S told me she needed new jazz shoes, and followed that by saying her Crocs don’t fit anymore either. Crocs are another shoe that should be for children’s feet only. They are made of an old trash can, they come in Crayola box colors, they have holes in which you can stick a bunch of overpriced crappy doodads, and they make everyone who wears them look like they need occupational therapy for a brain injury. Kids can at least get away with wearing Crocs since they fall under the convenient slip-on category of footwear. Adults just look like dumbasses. I don’t want to buy Crocs for my child in an adult size. They should not even be available in adult sizes.

The truth is, she and I now wear the same size shoe. My nine year old and I have the same size foot. That’s just wrong. By the time her feet stop growing, she is going to have to shop in the drag queen shoe department. And while we wear the same size, we do not share the same taste, so it’s not like I can buy shoes for both of us to wear. Especially since I don’t need any Crocs or jazz shoes.

Here’s the breakdown. I wear a seven. S now wears a seven. And E, my twelve year old daughter, is almost in an eight. Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep three women in shoes? At this rate, one of those kids isn’t going to have a college fund. Maybe we can make our shoes out of duct tape and cardboard, or one of us can strap the cats on our feet. They would make a great pair of homemade Uggs.

I have to stunt this growth somehow. Tomorrow, it’s black coffee and cigarettes for breakfast.