Boys and shopping. Two words that don’t easily go together. For not the first time in my son’s young life, when I finally got him to the shoe store, his foot had grown a full size (or size and ½ – depending on the make of the shoe.) How could this happen? How did he manage to continue to squeeze his foot into his ever shrinking shoe?
A week and a half before the fateful shopping day, he did say that his shoes may be feeling a little snug, but he assured me that the need for new shoes wasn’t imminent. And, unlike pants and shirts, it is impossible for an outsider to see if a shoe is too small, so I rolled with it.
Around this same time, he started to complain of leg pain. Now, granted, some of this pain was easy to explain – the scratches on his legs and bruises that one gets just because one is a boy. But, I started to get suspicious.
Finally, I put my foot down and said, “we are going shopping after school.” And lo and behold, that’s when it became clear that going from a 9 ½ to 10 was not going to be sufficient. The saleswoman told me that he’s a 10 right now, but probably won’t be for much longer. When my son put on the 10 ½ sneakers, I think that’s when he realized how small his other shoes had become.
Not all sneakers are equal, so we ultimately ended up with a size 11, which gave him comfort and enough room to grow. In dress shoes, we stuck with a 10 ½.
A month earlier, I had purchased baseball cleats (without him) based on his 9 ½ sized sneakers. He put them on at home and said they fit fine. The last time he wore those cleats was 5 days before our shopping trip, and he said they felt better than his “slightly snug” sneakers. Once we got home from the shoe store, I asked him to put the cleats on again – and now, he struggled to put them on and admitted that they were too tight as well.
So, how could this happen? My best explanation is: just like the frog that doesn’t realize that s/he is boiling to death, the gradual growth of my son’s feet fooled him into thinking this was the way his shoes should feel. But, once out of the boiling water, there was no going back. As soon as he was in properly fitting shoes, he could no longer tolerate the feeling of snugness.
I wish I could say the moral to the story is to go shopping as soon as the shoes start to feel tight. I can only hope that next time he tells me when the water is warm, not scorching.
