Pink Shoes

As a bratty teenager I once refused to wear a pair of pink shoes that my mother had bought me. She had also sewn me a pair of denim pants that were meant to resemble jeans and had bought me a t-shirt that read, "Don't ask me to think. I was hired for my looks" to complete the outfit. I hated that shirt. For a start, I was proud of my perceived intelligence and certainly never thought that I was in the least attractive (so what has changed?). I felt dishonest wearing that shirt and embarrassed. I also hated those jeans. No one else had jeans/pants like that and I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb. Besides, they looked homemade. And then of course there were those shoes ... well the less said the better.

Selfish teen that I was I let my mother know exactly what I thought about the outfit. My father had a talk with me and I ended up wearing the outfit to a long-awaited youth group activity. I was miserable until night time when the darkness hid the worst of it.

I've hated pink shoes ever since.

So what possessed me to buy another pair of pink shoes? Well, I desperately needed a pair of shoes to go walking in. Most of my shoes are falling apart and those that I used for walking either made my feet or my shins ache. I casually mentioned to DH that I needed some shoes and he whizzed me off to the sports shop to buy a pair.

Sons#4 & 5 came too and much to their disgust we were in the shop for at least an hour while I tried on shoes. Very early in the exercise I realised that the pair of pink shoes was the most comfortable pair in the shop BUT I did not want to buy pink shoes. I even said it aloud several times:

"I AM NOT BUYING PINK SHOES."

Eventually I had to face the truth. No other pair of shoes in the store was half as comfortable as this pair.

Fine.

I bought the pink shoes.

Later that day I went for a walk. In my pink shoes. I discovered several things. Firstly, no shoes feel as comfortable in action as they did in the store. Less than two minutes into my walk and my feet and shins were aching.

Secondly, no matter how much you pay for a pair of pink shoes, they still look like ugly pink shoes.

Thirdly, pink shoes designed for walking are not designed to be weatherproof. These shoes leak. Badly. And no amount of rain or mud is ever going to improve the appearance of ugly pink shoes.

After twenty minutes, the pain had lessened but the shoes still glowed bright pink with no signs of diminishing. Secretly I'm afraid that these shoes will never wear out no matter how much I wear them.

My only consolation in having a pair of expensive ugly pink shoes that hurt my feet and legs is that surely there must be an unwritten rule somewhere that something so ugly must burn off the calories at twice the usual rate.