Daddy, Where are my Shoes?

the past twelve months I have spent approx- imately 38 percent of my waking hours looking for shoes.

No, not my own shoes. I know where my own shoes are.

When I take them off, I put them away so that when I want to use them again, I know where they are. And even if, by some odd chance, I don’t put my shoes away, I can usually retrace my steps and figure out where I left them.

This is not the case with my chil- dren. Children’s shoes are elusive. They have plenty of shoes, but they have no idea where any of them are. Yes, they have a place for their shoes. Yes, there are usually shoes in that place. It’s just rare when an actual matching pair of shoes is there at the same time.

Recently we were going out somewhere, so I told my kids to get their shoes on and load up in the mini-van. My 5 year-old daughter comes tromping out wearing her big orange rain boots.

I told her, “It’s the middle of sum- mer, it hasn’t rained in a month, you are not going out in your rain boots. Go get some other shoes.”

“I couldn’t find any other shoes,” she said.

I figured she must be mistaken, so, I told her I would “help” her find her shoes. I found shoes in her closet. I found shoes under her bed. I found shoes in the living room. I found a total of five shoes--unfortu- nately, none of them matched each other.

There was one Sunday shoe, one tennis shoe, one sandal, and two different slip-on shoes. (Both of the slip-on shoes had unicorns on them, but they still weren’t a matching pair of shoes!)

I had given up and told her to wear her rain boots when I luckily stumbled across the match to her sandal sticking out from under the couch.

But, once you find their shoes, you’re set for the rest of the day, right? Wrong!

You see, children have a tendency to take their shoes off wherever and whenever they want. They might take one shoe off. They might take both shoes off. And if they take both shoes off in the same room, consider yourself lucky.

And even if you make it out the door with all the shoes on the correct feet, it doesn’t mean you’re done looking for shoes.

A child is fully capable of entering a mini-van with two shod feet yet arriving at your destination shoeless. And knowing those shoes are some- where in the car doesn’t make them any easier to find.

Because children’s shoes are elu- sive. For more funny-ish stuff, check out slowjoe40.com. (Capell is a Serve