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A fascination with footwear
As you scramble to get dressed in the morning and get everyone out the door on time, feelings about your shoes are probably few and far between.
First, do the shoes match the outfit? For growing kids, do the shoes still fit if it's been more than two days since last worn? But most importantly, do the two shoes match?
Only when you are picking up the house later that night and are having problems shoving all the shoes into the closet do you stop to realize the importance of shoes and obviously how many pairs of shoes you own.
Unless you are like my 5-year-old son, who likes to run outside barefoot -- regardless of whether it's summer or winter -- shoes actually play an important role.
Anyone who has ended the day with a blister because of ill-fitting shoes can attest to the importance of a good pair of shoes.
The problem lies in where to draw the line. How many pairs of shoes does a person really need? Some people have two pairs of shoes, work shoes and play shoes. On the other end are those who dedicate an entire closet just to shoes, along with having them organized by heel height and arranged in rainbow order.
Although my husband would tend not to agree, I fall somewhere in the middle. I have shoes which are worn down to the threads, while others only see daylight for weddings.
Besides, it's not possible for me to have a true footwear fetish, since I just recently came to grips that I will never have petite feet. Shoes in double-digits are usually in limited supply at department stores, so I have limited access to them. (I vaguely remember wearing a size 6 shoe when I was a teenager approximately three days before moving onto a larger size.)
In the end, I am just not adventurous enough to have a variety of shoes. I stick with flat-heels or slip-ons.
On the other hand, I will see girls at the schools walking from class to class with three-inch heels. I don't wear anything that high when dressing up, much less for everyday wear. I would have broken my ankle monthly during high school if I would have ventured into anything above half-an-inch.
While I may claim to have a limited number of shoes, my husband would not agree. He turns a blind eye to my closet that sometimes will not shut because the clothes are burgeoning out the door. But he has a hard time overlooking the shoes piled at the bottom of my closet.
I counter that he has just as many shoes as me and it takes every ounce of energy he has to keep breathing through his laughing.
This leads to the inevitable challenge: Who has more shoes?
After the final tally, my shoes usually outnumber my husband's footwear 2 to 1. But as I try to justify all the shoes, he just can't comprehend why I have to have a light brown, a medium brown and a dark brown pair of leather clogs, in addition to six pairs of flip-flops.
Some days I do wonder why I have so many shoes.
After all, I consider it a dress-up day if I put shoes on that A) require socks or panty hose or B) I have to bend over and lace up.
Otherwise, it's whatever I can slip on my feet the quickest as everyone scrambles out the door.
The excuses are as plentiful as the shoes in my house: You are supposed to let shoes "rest;" the flip-flops are not very practical in the snow; the dog is using the Nike as a chew toy.
But in the end, I want to know that I will have a choice -- a choice between black matte slips-ons or black patent slip-ons -- a choice my husband will never understand.