Tiny Pink Shoes

Someone needs to explain to me what it is about little girls and shoes.

When I was a little girl, back in the dark days of the eighties and nineties, gender neutrality was the thing. The impression I had was that successful mothering involved raising a child who eschewed the doll aisle and demanded an Erector set.

I think it's safe to say that the pendulum has swung on that one. Apparently I could, if I wanted to, purchase every last item for my daughters' entire childhoods in some shade of pink. Pink stacking rings? Check. Find me the bright light in corporate America who decided stacking rings needed to be recast in a pink version. Please. Because I want his job.

Both my daughters like to work those stereotypes. My oldest, for example, requested that I knit her a sweater. It is the pinkest pink that ever pinked. This sweater is visible from space, it is that pink -- gradients of pink. Younger daughter thinks that all activities should be tackled while wearing a tutu. She's got two: her primary light pink tutu, and her emergency back-up neon pink tutu. Because you don't want to be without a tutu when there's a mud puddle to sit in, right? Right.

But I do not get this shoe thing. Recently I was attempting to drive down a large, very busy, very fast street. I was chugging along marginally over the speed limit in the slow lane while cabs ran up behind my bumper to indicate that they were trying to pass in this slow lane, and who was I to insist on going so _slowly_ in it? So it was a mildly stressful situation, even before my one-year-old started making a sound that I'd describe as a combination between a car alarm, an air raid siren, and the sound a nursing mother makes the first time the little nursling takes a bite (don't tell me it never happens. I've nursed four.)

I did not spend a lot of time wondering why she was making that sound, because I was reasonably sure she wasn't being sucked out the window and I needed every last pregnant brain cell to keep us out of a fender-bender with an angry cabbie. So we got to just listen to this ruckus for a good fifteen minutes until I was able to pull over and dislodge the shark/coyote/sewer rat that must surely have  hold of my infant. So which was it?

It was her right shoe. Her right shoe had become un-velcroed. And she was screaming to indicate to me that I must reattach it.

Had we been in an accident and jammed the entire road system, it would have been the fault of the velcro on a sparkly Hello Kitty shoe.

Dearest, dearest child. If you ever make that sound again, I hope for your sake that you are at least under attack by a large stinging insect. It is fine to wear tutus. Rock that tutu. Wear the pinkest sweater that ever minced down the runway. Play with pink stacking rings (you'll have to find someone else to buy them). But please. We need to put tiny pink shoes in the proper perspective.