Day Ten: Walk A Mile in My Plastic Shoes

I'm a cheap Scot. This is God's honest truth. If there is a less expensive way to go about doing something, then count me in. I'll pioneer. I'll make like Oregon Trail and cross the river until all my oxen expire. 

This is probably one of the many reasons I have always had a bizarre affinity for plastic shoes....namely, jellies. It makes perfect sense, really. Why would any parent pay a ton of money for shoes their kids are going to outgrow in a few months anyway? AND (bonus!) when plastic shoes get dirty, you turn the hose on them and voila - good as new. So I grew up in jellies. Ones that looked like this:

Jellies were great shoes for adventuring. I spent many a summer day (and night) playing on the swing set in our back yard (which was charmingly ridiculous - rickety and rusty and I loved it so much). I pretended I was She-Ra. I pretended I was working with Willow and Val Kilmer to save that baby. I even stopped a few kidnappings, robberies, and other dastardly things with my chubby child gymnastic skills. The world was kept safe because I had comfortable, inexpensive shoes. It's that simple.

As I got older it became more difficult to find jellies in my size - which really should have been the hint to quit while I was ahead - but one day, in junior high, I found a pair. They looked just like the kind I had grown up with.....strappy, glittery, gold. But this time, they had this giant disco-ass platform too, like some great 70s Elton John cast-offs.

Mom, knowing that I had searched high and low for jellies, said I could get them under one condition - that I could not wear them to school. And for some reason, that struck me as TOTALLY UNFAIR and ARGH MOM and WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN and tears and whining and nonsense so absurd that if I had a time machine I'd go back and punch myself. Can you imagine? Remember that I told you how ugly and awkward I was in my tween years? Can you imagine adding disco platform jelly sandals to that ensemble? I would have looked like a refugee from "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." Luckily, I didn't get the shoes. And I'm still so sorry that I was such an asshole to my mother. 

Every once in a while, I'll troll the internet to see if they make jellies for grown up ladies. Urban Outfitters did recently, but I have a strange love-hate relationship with them and couldn't bring myself to do it. I don't think they'd look too cute on a 30 year old anyway. Now I need support for my old, damaged feet. Shoes can't rub my heels, or catch me at my weirdly high arches. I've gotten to the age where I look at sexy hooker shoes and sigh, because as much as I love them, there is no way in hell I will ever wear them. 

It doesn't matter though. THESE are my favorite comfy-ugly-love shoes now.

This is what it means to grow up. When your taste in comfy-ugly-love shoes evolves from disco drag queen to "old man and the sea". Shoes do not get cheaper and lazier than this. All you have to do is aim your foot in the general direction of the shoe, and you'll put them on. I'm starting to think I should stockpile them in case, God forbid, RocketDog stops designing them. Because I'm not getting any younger. I'm going to be wearing old man shoes forever. And I'm so fine with that. So fine it's crazy.