Need a simple character reference?

My kids think that they can tell all about a person by the shoes he/she wears. I think that someone once said that you have to walk a few miles in some of those shoes in order to understand that much, but I will allow that they are on the right track. Track.

They fully understand the importance of the right shoe to one’s social standing and relative well-being. I know because I have been shopping with them. Well, at the very least, shoes are indicative of one’s taste and style, not to mention one’s preferences in sports and exercise.

The shoe industry has certainly kept pace (pun) with every other segment of the fashion industry in terms of what it has to offer and to whom.

When I was a kid, we had two pair of shoes, one for church and one for everything else. If you had school shoes, they were just borrowed from one of those two categories and renamed.

Not anymore. Name a sport, and they make a shoe for it; which is good, I guess, if you have big closets and wallets. In fact, I challenge you to think of any activity for which they don’t make some kind of footgear. You might have to resort to catalogs or the internet to get them, but they are out there in abundance.

The name of your game is just one factor in choosing a shoe, however. You also have your image to consider. Say you need court shoes so you can sit around and watch TV.

Just what image do you want to adopt for TV watching? Something Kobe Bryant-ish; or maybe something a little more Tiger Woods, off the course that is, because golf shoes really wouldn’t be appropriate for taking in an “American Idol” segment.

Or say you need a pair for walking around in the mall. A comfortable pair of skater hightops would be just the thing. After all, you wouldn’t want to be sending out confusing messages. How my kids think they can tell so much about a person by his shoes is a mystery to me. Of course, I am rather uninformed and image-challenged.

At an outdoor theatrical production a few years ago, my daughters staked out positions right next to the flow of foot traffic so they could play their shoe game.

They lay on blankets on their front sides, and kicked off their own shoes. With their chins in their hands, they watched the feet go by. The object of the game was to see whether they can guess what kind of people have their feet in the shoes on review. Their whispered conversation went something like this:
“Oh look, this guy must be really cool. I saw his shoes in “GQ” (I don’t know why they read “GQ”), and they are so awesome. I wonder where he got them. Not around here for sure.” They all surreptitiously check out the wearer of the shoes.

“See, I told you he was cool.”

“And check these out. This guy must play basketball for U-state. They have their shoes specially-made, and no one has them just like that.” (I don’t know where she read that, maybe in “UQ.”) By craning their necks hard, they are able to take the guy in, clear up to his Adam’s apple.

“Whoa! I have to be right; he has to play for someone.”

“Hey look, this person is pretty cool. She has shoes just like mine” There was a tinge of disappointment registered in that announcement.

“Wait! They are mine!”

In stead of looking up to see who was wearing the shoes in question, she whipped her head around to see whether her own new sandals were still in the pile. They weren’t.
My daughter’s adult chaperone had quietly sneaked around behind the girls, put on her shoes, even though they fit like heck, and got in the line of traffic. All she had to do was keep on walking until she passed the gamers. (By then she was feeling really cool herself.)

My daughter was convinced that she was the first and only one in the Intermountain West to have sandals just like the ones she saw parading in front of her. For one bleak second she thought that someone else had found them too.

But that was only for a second. After she was satisfied that the wearer of the coolest sandals ever was not a usurper or the Intermountain Shoe Burglar in person, she steadied her breathing and was able to resume her position as “the coolest of all,” with her dignity and image mostly intact.