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Screaming for Shoes

Trips to Target are practically a weekend ritual at this point. I obviously need laundry detergent, hand soap and a new coat all at once, and it’s a one stop shop for almost everything.

This weekend I tossed the girls onto a cart, one in the seat and one in the basket, and headed inside (where I found the only double cart occupied by one kid). I gave a brief look through the clothes and where they leaned out of the cart in an effort to touch everything, and we headed to the shoe aisle.

Cute stuff but nothing earth shattering, let’s move along.

They really liked these
Oh, S needs winter boots, let’s check those out here.

As I slowly navigated the cart into the children’s shoe aisle both girls started getting visibly excited. They stood up in the cart, leaned over, and then both started yelling “SHOES, SHOES!!!” in screechy toddler voice while desperately grabbing at all the shoes they could reach.

S pulled her shoes off and threw them to the floor. The loafers with the dogs on them were way better, sizes be damned (and never mind that she can’t put her own shoes on) . D took off one shoe, and then realizing she couldn’t reach anything began to cry, standing in the cart with one sock foot. I handed their own shoes back to them and all shoes were promptly cast to the floor again. The shoes they loved so dearly a month ago were now total garbage in their minds.

I found a pair of black ankle boots (which are not what we were looking for) that were on clearance and tried them on S. They were a touch big (she has the larger feet between the two) but they should be fine in the next month the way the kid is growing, so I started to take them off and she started to scream.

Let’s just pause here for a minute and talk about screaming. I don’t mean she started to cry. I mean scream. And I don’t mean cry-scream, I mean someone is attacking her scream. This kid could be a horror film soundtrack with that ear-piercing howl that erupts when something doesn’t go her way.
Just wear the shoes and stop screaming.

In an effort to minimize the scene we have already made with the carnage of dropped shoes, yelling the obvious (SHOES!!!) and screaming, I out both shoes on her, still attached to one another via the stretchy band, and we moved right along to the ice cream aisle.

For the record, ice cream is way less interesting than shoes and everything else was so much less eventful than when we were in the shoe aisle.

I have to admit to sympathizing with them. Walking into the State Street Nordstrom Rack kind of makes me want to run up and down the aisles, grabbing things while yelling "shoes!" Throwing them up in the air and letting them rain list confetti on me.

Note: In this fantasy that wouldn't hurt like getting hit with a shoe in real life.

But seriously kids, get ahold of yourselves. We don't actually do those kinds of things in polite society. Yes, I have the urge to lick the window of John Fluevog whenever I walk past, but I don't because that's weird and someone may call the cops. And germs, but mostly polite society. You can't just go around acting like a maniac whenever you're excited. Or you can because you're a toddler and in an effort to make you stop screaming Mom bought you shoes.

Well played little brats.

How these two came to care about shoes that much is beyond me. It’s not like they have a closet overflowing with shoes. They have play shoes and dress shoes. That’s it. No in between shoes. No choices in colors of play shoes. They have black DCs to play in and glitter Mary Janes (from Target and OshKosh), and now the ankle boots. The snow boots D will wear are hand me downs she hasn’t even seen yet, so really kids, what’s with the obsession with shoes? Is the love of shoes genetic, or is it the fact that it’s one of the few words they can say? Then again, they also say “duck” and we don’t have a meltdown in the bath aisle. Perhaps they heard me talking about shoes and the loss of my legions of lovely shoes while still in utero. Or maybe they just happen to be total girls who love something that they can touch.

The fact that there’s a good chance sparkles are also included can’t hurt either.

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