elizabethlevett

Actually, no. 

Not necessarily.

As of one estimate back in 2016, about three hundred million children don’t have shoes.

I looked it up. And they should, they really should.

I’m not exactly sure why I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe it’s the shoes I see on my little students. Children love shoes, especially new shoes. I always did. We might have had hand-me-down clothes when I was growing up, but we always had good shoes. It was something my mom insisted on. Stride Right, Buster Brown, Red Goose. “Half the fun of having feet is Red Goose Shoes.” You got a new pair for school. You got a dress-up pair for holidays. And you got new tennies in the summer – Keds, or Converse, or PF Fliers. (“Run faster, jump higher!”)

Here’s what bugs me – shoes that light up. What the? Little kids are so excited to get new shoes, why do they need shoes that light up when they walk? And what’s with Velcro? Picture this, you’re sitting in a chair in front of 22 five-year-olds, trying to deliver a lesson or read a story and you hear the “quick, quick, quick” of a kid fiddling with the Velcro on his or her shoes. Or else they’re gently hitting their shoe against the floor to make it light up. Over and over. Something to play with, something to do besides listen to the lesson and, I don’t know, maybe learn to read?? I get it. I sound like a snarky old killjoy. But here’s the thing, light-up shoes invariably end up in the landfill. And light-up shoes, I’ve read, still probably have mercury in them. Otherwise they’re made with a lithium battery. Toxic waste. Cute. When parents are agreeing to buy their child a pair of light-up shoes, do they really have time to stop and ask the salesperson, “now how does one responsibly dispose of these toxic shoes??”

I remember years ago when I was working in a school that served a significant population of children who lived in poverty. That was when I could go to Mervyn’s and get a pair of new kids’ shoes and a six-pack of socks. Even then I could afford that much. That was when there still was a Mervyn’s. Though I suspect I could still do a fair job of it at Target. When I gave a new pair of shoes to a child who really needed them, they were ecstatic – shoes I can run in, shoes I can play in! Yes!

I don’t want to be a killjoy. Cool shoes are so important. They say so much about your identity. I was so in love with the color blue when I was three, that when my mom bought me a pair of red Keds, I couldn’t wait to show them off. “See my new blue shoes!” I was insistent. Socks are important too. I think of high school. I got written up in gym class every day. Every day. Because I didn’t come suited up with white sneakers and white anklets. Different times. Rebel me, I had to make a statement with my socks. I proudly came to roll call in rainbow knee socks with my Converse sneaks. Every day. And yes, the rainbow socks were the kind with the individual toes. Each toe in a different rainbow color. Even grownups were personified by their footwear. My algebra teacher had some kind of unfortunate, corrective oxfords that squeaked as he walked up and down the rows of desks. I’m certain he knew I was failing as I sweated through those Friday pop quizzes. Algebra escaped me. Math, okay. But Algebra? What was with “x” anyway? “X” is a letter, so what’s it doing in a Math equation?! Letters already had their assigned tasks in Reading, Spelling, English. I could diagram any sentence, cold. But do an equation with an “x” in it? You lost me. But it was those squeaky, assisted-living style shoes that truly unnerved me. They said it all. Tension, alienation, despair, teenage angst meets the inexplicable and unavoidable message of ultimate decline, of finally giving up on glamor and whimsy altogether. I couldn’t wait to have that class behind me.

Spin on to adulthood. Spin on to having my own job, my own money, a credit card. Oh the shoes! The shoes of San Francisco to walk proudly down the streets of San Francisco. Italian shoes, pumps with little heels, flats with squared toes in olive suede. Olive suede! (I had that one pair re-soled twice.) Life is good in good shoes. Mom taught me well. These days my collection of cool shoes is kept neatly tucked away in their boxes. Each pair is worn during its designated season – boots in fall and winter, cute and colorful lace-up shoes or mary-janes, or sandals in spring and summer. When their time of year passes, they are given a good cleaning, a generous layer of neat’s foot oil or polish and then wrapped in tissue and boxed up again. Ah, the joy and satisfaction of polishing a favorite pair of shoes – filling in the scratches and bringing back the shine. I can picture my dad with his little tin of black Kiwi, just like David now with his brown Florsheim wing-tips. The Kiwikit, even. He got it in fifth grade and still has it – two tins, one for black, one for brown. And two sets of brushes, one little brush with a little handle, the bristles stained and angled to one side from use. The small one is for applying the shoe cream. Then there’s a larger one that fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, just for buffing. Shoe polishing is a ritual of love and a statement of gracious and responsible living if ever there was one. I’m certain that in the case of an emergency, my husband will grab the strong box, the keys, the “valuables.” I will fill my arms with boxes of shoes and may even run back through the dancing flames for one more pair of boots – “I can’t possibly face the winter without the brown ones!”

But I digress. My point, if there is one, would simply be this: good shoes are intrinsically cool. And part of raising children, my mom would insist, is to instill a sense of appreciation for quality and its many benefits. If you must buy your child a shoe with some kind of gimmick, consider the boy who came to my class one year wearing his new school shoes and an ear-to-ear grin. His shoes seemed serviceable enough, tan and dark green, designed for running around and playing, or even hiking. There was at first no discernible extra feature, until we went outside for recess. That’s when he proudly showed me that his shoes had a specially designed rubber sole that left animal prints wherever he walked. I can’t remember now if he left the prints of a puma or a young buck deer, or maybe even a dinosaur. But this kid had some seriously cool shoes. He didn’t play with them in class. He didn’t need to. He could wait till recess. In his new shoes he could ran fast and jump high. These were shoes that easily constituted half the fun of having feet. And with no sinister toxic waste to leave in the landfill as he ultimately grew out of them. All God’s children ought to have cool shoes. I insist.

By the way, there are a number of organizations who provide kids’ shoes for low income families. Here are a few: shoesthatfit.org, soles4souls.org, and humanresponsenetwork.org are just a few. Just a thought.