Back to school shopping for a brand new set of pre-sharpened pencil crayons (brilliant), markers, erasers both gum and ink, computer head-sets, hats that deflect lice nits (think about it, what a great business opportunity) can be exciting for both parents and kids but shopping for shoes is an outing we all dread.
It’s not like when we were kids when our small town had one shoe store. You walked in accompanied by your parent to the smell of leather cooking on a warm stove, sporting your back-to-school socks before being escorted to “the chair” mounted three feet above the rest to be fitted with the metal foot measurer making it seem as though the shoes that would soon emerge from “the back” were custom made to suit the exact size and shape of your foot.
You might try on the two choices that somewhat leaned in the direction of your gender and walked out with the one that after the two gentlemen serving you felt confident you were truthful when after pressing the tip of their thumbs into your big-toe through the rubber, you confirmed you could in fact feel their digits. The lucky thumb press sealed the deal and off you went to enjoy an ice cream sundae and some thumbprint cookies (which were obviously inspired by the two gentlemen at my small town shoe store).
Thirty years later, the back-to-school-shoe-shopping experience is somewhat less favourable.
To begin, there is no chance you are going to find your way down the one aisle your child’s soon-to-be new shoes are located because there are either seventy-nine angry parents with three hundred angrier kids or there are forty-nine angry parents with two hundred angrier kids alongside pyramids of empty shoe boxes, mismatched shoes, laces strewn across the aisle simulating lethal laser beams that upon impact will shock you through the automatic front doors.
Rather than two options for female and just the one for male there are thirty-four pairs of shoes to choose from most of which adorn some sort of cartoon character no child will wear beyond the first day of school because some bleepity bleep will tell them that character is so last year and that the shoes really do make the man.
Your child typically wants thirty-three of the thirty-four pairs but the only pair left in their size is the pair they despise with some sort of creature or unknown beast that has not yet made it to the big screen and therefore has no place riding shot-gun alongside those brilliant pre-sharpened pencil crayons.
When (and BIG if) you do find a store representative, chances are good they do not work in the shoe department so after a lengthy smoke and coffee break, they may or may not return with a colleague who will have the following answer.
“I’m sorry. All of the shoes are on the shelves.” When clearly, there are NO shoes on the shelves, they are littering the shoe and boot aisles and have crept into seasonal.
Did you check “the back?” That mysterious cavern with row upon row of custom fit shoes?
Blank stare.
And so it begins. You start rifling boxes off of shelves in anything that comes close to being in your child’s size because this seems to be the most common approach.
Odds are good the box that reads 8 isn’t in fact housing two size 8 shoes. You might luck out with one but even that’s like being struck by lightning.
You forgot the back-to-school socks so you search frantically for a nylon sock box but they too have been tossed and become so sweaty you quickly give up your plan to cover your face with one and demand some size 8 answers and fast.
You end up at the check-out with one size 9 (close enough) cowboy boot and one size 7 moccasin after finding your youngest in the toy aisle and apologizing to all those your middle child ran over while mastering shopping cart baby races with friends she met along the way.
What happened to the men with the thumbs? I bet there’s an app for that now.
Home for some thumbprint cookies.
Back-to-shoe shopping is not what it used to be.
