FashBlog.com

By Christina VanGinkel

Shoes are fun to shop for and fun to wear, available in everything from neutral colors and fabrics to wild designs, color combinations, and materials that scream 'Wow'. Shoes can be the perfect way for someone with a bit of a wild personality to dress up an outfit that must otherwise be kept calm for various reasons such as work. Shoe lovers walk a bit of a different line then the rest of us.

Through the years, I have never been much of a shoe person, though my daughter was, or so I thought. I am content in owning one pair of tennis shoes, a pair of sandals, and a pair of boots to wear outside for doing chores. My daughter is not an overly crazy shoe person, mind you; she just loves shopping for them and has a few more pairs than the average person. She is sensible though, and does not actually have a closet full. Her love of them has started to spill over to shopping for my grandson though. She called me the other day to tell me that he was now the very proud owner of a pair of 'gator' boots. Out shopping for herself, as she had said she really needed a new pair of day to day shoes, they had stopped in a small store in the town they were visiting that had a huge sign in the window advertising 'Clearance, 50% Off Liquidation', to see what they could find.

They ended up leaving the store with no shoes for my daughter, but with my two-year-old grandson the very proud owner of, as he said, his pair of 'gator' boots, a pair of cowboy boots in a grey colored, and artificial alligator pattern.

Now several weeks later, my grandson's novelty with these boots has definitely not worn off. He has been known to wear them in the evening with his pajamas, to pull them on first thing in the morning with nothing on but his underwear. He wears them with everything he owns, including dress clothes, jeans, even shorts. My daughter said he shows them to everyone, such as the waiter at the IHOP they went to for breakfast the other morning. He will just announce to whoever is willing to listen, that he has a pair of gator boots, and would they like to see them. She said he then sticks out his foot to show them, all the while grinning from ear to ear and explaining that they just walked into a store, took them out of the box, put them on, paid for them at the counter, and now they were his!

Shoe lovers are born everyday of the week, and every one seems to either have one in the family, or knows one personally. However, until you meet one in person, you never really know what that means. I though my daughter was our shoe lover, but I think we were mistaken. She might be a shoe lover in training, but not an honest to goodness shoe aficionado. I think ours is currently about two feet tall, in a pair of gator boots that make him believe he is actually closer to six feet.