Consider Yourself Warned - S - Shoes

If there were any single question you could ask someone to find out if they were a parent, it would be this: are you a parent?

But after that, the next-best question would be: so what do you think of shoes?

Ask adults with no small children in their lives what they think of shoes and you'll get answers ranging from "I love shoes, I have, like, 30 pairs," to "Shoes are an evil dreamed up by corporations to keep us paying for unnecessary footwear."

Ask a parent of small children what they think of shoes, and their eyes will take on a far-away look. "Shoes" they say, with a note of dread in their voice. "What I think of... " And then they will sigh, or perhaps moan.

So what do parents have against shoes? We have nothing against normal, functional adult shoes. The problem is with children's shoes, which are basically a very expensive breed of parasite.

Like all parasites, kids' shoes have a life cycle that is both simple and profoundly disturbing.

It starts in the store. You go in for one thing or another, maybe meaning to buy a single, practical pair of children's shoes, or maybe not intending to buy any at all. But children's shoes, like most predators, have designed features that attract their prey. Like tiny little dragonfly decals... awwww! And OMG, are those froggy slippers?? So cute!! (wait, will they eat the dragonflies?) And even if you think these shoes or these ones are terrible, if you have a small daughter anywhere in range I wouldn't bet money on you making it out without them.

So the shoes get into your house. After they are proudly worn for all of 2.2 seconds, they find their way to the floor, or possibly even the closet. This is where phase 2 of the shoe reproductive cycle will take place. Once the shoes are alone in a safe, dark place, what happens is [WARNING GRUESOME] one of the shoes actually eats its companion. (dramatization at right)

The next day, roughly one minute before your child is scheduled to leave for the bus stop, they will realize that they don't have shoes. So you look for shoes. You just bought a pair, right? They have to be somewhere. And look at all those shoes in the closet, there must be a matching pair in there, right?

This is one thing that math problems always get wrong. You'll have a question like: a closet has four pairs of green shoes, ten pairs of white shoes, and six pairs of red shoes. How many shoes do you need to pull out to get a matched set?

And after so many years in school we're trained to think that if we can just pull 5 or 10 or 37 shoes from the closet, eventually we'll have a pair. But the real answer to the problem is: infinity. Infinity shoes. You could stand in front of that closet pulling out shoes until your hair goes gray and the earth plunges into the sun and your kids move out for college, but none of them will ever form a matched set. Such is the black magic of children's shoes.

But you'll look anyway, because hope springs eternal. Once you search under every surface, you'll have a row of maybe 10 adorable little shoes, none of which comes close to matching any other one. At which point, you'll realize that you have to break down and go shoe shopping again, thus completing the reproductive cycle. The eaten shoe, through its self-sacrifice, has ensured that its species will continue to thrive.

                                                                                     Never forget

It's actually pretty cool, until it's happening to you. Kind of like the rest of nature.

So be warned, un-bechilded ones. And please, please, one of you invent a pair of shoes that more or less stays together. Or just start a barefoot revolution, either way.