Splinters

Every year I begin a crusade. I believe children should be shod when they go outside. Shoeless Joe Jackson and his fellow barefoot comrades view the coming of crocuses and planting of gardens as a sign to lose any footwear they may have consented to wear during the winter months. As a result, I have been known to begin loading the car an hour prior to an appointment only to be sabotaged by a single shoe.

If the people who determined when to show clemency about being late for appointments, witnessed my struggle to get all of them into the car, only to spend a frantic 30 minutes tearing apart couches and beds to locate a single pair of not necessarily matching but left and right shoes, only to then bargain with the shoe gods and being willing to accept even just two shoes the same size that are for the same foot, they’d just give me a standing appointment…when you show, it’s your time.

I have also in sheer desperation, given my eldest daughter a twenty and told her to go into the Walmart and come back out with one size fits all slippers for whoever it is that is missing footwear.

So you’ld think I’d be gung ho about being barefoot but having had small children for the past 16 years, I’ve also taken out my fair share of splinters. The most memorable one I helped remove from my three year old son during the course of a family party. He’d been playing on the wooden deck on our house and got a huge one in his left foot. He was in tears. We were hosting the party but spent the bulk of the next hour soaking, working with tweezers, but nothing was working and he was in hysterics.

My brother tried to calm him down by explaining the situation. My son was having none of it.

“If you don’t let us remove the splinter, it will continue to hurt.”
“IT HURTS NOW!”

“If you don’t let us remove the splinter, it could even become infected.”
“I DON’T CARE!”

“If you don’t let us remove it, the infection could be serious.”
“SO?”

“So your parents who love you want to remove the splinter so you won’t get sick or be in pain or die.”
“I DON’T… WANT… TO LIVE!” he gasped, holding and hiding his foot from my tweezers.

I voted for more soaking at this point.

Over the years, I’ve learned tricks like having the kids close their eyes while I remove the foreign objects from their toes and that handing them an ice cream while watching television is also a good anesthesia. I’ve also given up explaining why splinters need to come out entirely.

But I’ve also come up with a solution for splinters and summer and shoes. You don’t have to wear shoes if you can’t find them, but then you must wear socks.

Thick socks.
Thick Soccer up past your knees socks.

They don’t have to match.

One morning of enduring those heat insulators on one’s feet and we’ll have no problems from June until September with locating footwear.

Now, if only I could devise a similar solution for winter.

Shoeless Joe and Blog Action

When I was a mere junior in high school, I went to prom with a guy who wore polished white shoes with gold buckles and a powder blue tux. My brother Joe opened the door, took one look and said, "Nice shoes."

If it hadn't been for my desire to simultaneously bust a gut laughing and bust his chops for insulting my date, I'd have asked him to change into a tux and brought my brother instead.

Ever since then, the word "Nice" has been...a loaded term for me, fraught with meaning because of it's vagueness.

Today I got an email saying...Nice blog. The email author disclosed that he would like to link my site to his in return for his being linked on mine.

I clicked on the site. It sells athletic sneakers.

Most of the free world spends many a sleepless night in wonder of what an online shoe salesman likes to read during the sports void that takes place after the Superbowl and before Opening day. Now, the mystery will be solved.

CHOCOLATE FOR YOUR BRAIN would be one of a mere fifty listed sites considered link worthy in the "Other" category, along with 15 other categories with fifty blogs each listed. The email assured me that thousands of people visit this site daily, and it would increase my traffic.  My guess is they're the saps that link to the guy's blog in hopes of driving traffic to their own, coming to see if the links have been put up and if they actually work.

Since I can't find a counter on the site, I cannot know the verasity of this claim. The "About Us" section of the website indicates it's been in business since 2003 but the write up on the decision to provide extrodinary customer service to those needing to find out the finer points about buying a sneaker (think Air Jordan), posted in December of 2007.

So maybe they're just updating the website and have found me to be an up and commer. My gut says to let this opportunity pass but I'm still a newbie, only providing quality blog entertainment since October of 2007 with a mere 19 visiting on a good day, so I just don't know. It's just a link and I'm pleased that someone noticed, but given the fact that there's never an indication of what the reader actually liked in my blog, I'm left to wonder.

Still, the email said "Nice blog."

So I'll return the favor.

"Nice" shoes.

Fighting without a Prayer Never Works

Whenever my kids can't find their (pick one), shoes, lunch box, money they swear they've held onto for sentimental reasons since their baptism, the ugly accusation gets flung.

Someone took it.

Now when something's missing, if I'm on my game, I mention asking Saint Anthony. The kids know this, they often wave me off about it too. But when I couldn't find my daughter's tap shoes last Saturday (and she always always misplaces them), I was irritated. I ranted as I searched for her shoes. We were doing so well on time before that snag too.

"Somebody took it." she explained.

I'm was ready with the comeback, "Who? We all live here. No one else fits your shoes. No one else needs your ballet slippers."

It went over her head but as I said, I was irritated.
"Did you check under the bed?"

Kids are scurrying, checking under beds because the worst of all possible alternatives has happened on a Saturday, Mom is mad.

"Did you check under the couch?"
Kids are again running about, pulling all matter of footwear and no small number of socks out from under the various couches in the home.

Mom is still ranting.
"I want all your shoes...all the time...in the closet...where they belong....every time...everyone of you! How hard is this? Why do we have to go through this?" I am hitting my mom stride.

Kids are still looking. I've spotted one of them praying, muttering purposely in my direction, and I see the words, "Saint Anthony." But I'm still mad as I'm going through the cubbies, searching for two black tap shoes and two ballet shoes and the time is indicating we have 20 minutes or we're late. "No praying, just looking." I snap.

Still looking. 15 minutes or we're late. Rant resumes as I catch a few kids abandoning the search for shoes.

"I want your shoes up here...in the shoe tree...up high..." and I point for effect.

And there they are.

In the closet.

In the shoe tree.

Up high.

"Okay." The kids are all there. They all see the shoes.
They've seen me rant in all my ugliness.

"Kids," as I'm realizing, Saint Anthony took the shoes so that Mom would find her daily dose of humility, "I'm sorry I got so messed up over slippers." There are hugs. The apology is accepted en masse.

And then, while the children slipped back to playing Wii and watching television, as I began to start to scurry a bit to get the girls to their dance class, I asked Saint Anthony, "Could you help me find a way to get them to class on time too?"

And we didn't hit a single red light en route, not one.