Or wear wooden shoes. Thanks to my father’s advice I never accepted any wooden nickels. Not an uncommon adage for my father’s generation. However, he never told me not to wear wooden shoes. He would often bring home unusual gifts for us from his business travels. He returned home from Holland with wooden shoes. I am pretty confident he didn’t intend for any of us to actually wear them. They were to be used as an addition to our stockings. Another vessel for Santa to fill. In 16th century Holland, kids would put straw in their wooden shoes so Santa would have food for his reindeer. Later, the wooden shoes became the equivalent of a stocking.
I clearly remember not being satisfied with a perfectly beautiful pair of wooden shoes being unused for 364 days of the year. They must be worn and seen. So, I decided I would wear them to school.
I was in second grade, the youngest of four. My mother was always very concerned with appearance and how we behaved in public. Clearly my mother was experiencing a version of parental fatigue. I must have caught a portal of “I don’t really care what you do.” To my recollection she did not object or prevent me from wearing my wooden shoes to school. I slipped them on my feet and bolted out of the house, down the driveway and up the road to catch the bus. Should I remind you that I was wearing wooden shoes? Despite what the Dutch say, you can neither be agile or deft when running in wooden shoes. First of all they are not flexible. Secondly, they have no arch support and thirdly and sadly they chip easily. As I noisily boarded the school bus I sounded like a horse entering its stall. I didn’t care that the other kids were staring at my feet. I proudly and confidently walked down the aisle of the bus and sat down. I could not contain my excitement thinking about entering the school in my wooden shoes!
When I arrived at school I had a range of comments about my shoes. I became most defensive when someone said to me: “they don’t look very comfortable!” I aggressively stated: “they are very comfortable!” Why would the Dutch wear uncomfortable shoes? They wear them only because they are safe and water resistant! By the way, they were tortuously uncomfortable, but I made it through the day and retired them to their intended use. If anyone ever tells you wooden shoes are comfortable tell them you were warned at a very young age not to take any wooden nickels!
I do remember regretting wearing them to school. Not because I looked like a freak, but because I chipped them running up the street. The beautiful hand painted shoes were forever scarred by my need to show them off. Every Christmas after their debut they sat next to the other three pairs of shoes which were perfect and unscathed. Regardless, they were always brimming with goodies from Santa. Luckily, Santa left no wooden nickels in my wooden shoes!
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