FashBlog.com

By Christina VanGinkel

My youngest son and I went up town last night to buy him a pair of shoes. We went the other day to the one store in our area that we knew carried the style of shoe that he preferred, a skate style shoe, but they had no pairs in stock in his size. We often buy his shoes and clothes online, but he has recently gone through another serious growth spurt, and we decided that having his foot sized before we bought him another pair of shoes, was the parental thing to do. We checked a few other stores that same day that we thought might carry shoes in his preferred style, but none did. We were resolved that we were going to have to spend part of this weekend driving to Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Escanaba, Michigan, two towns about two hours and one hour away from us respectively just to find him a pair. His shoes that he was wearing were becoming so small that his toes were threatening to push out, and they were only a few months old. Then a friend of his at school asked him if he had checked a small sporting goods store one town over from us. I vaguely remembered hearing the name of the store before, so we pulled out the phone book, and sure enough in the regular listings, not the yellow pages, was the listing for the store. My son called, and as they were open until 6PM, we headed right up as that only would give us about an hour after we got there to shop.

Well, the young man that waited on us was very nice, and when I explained that I wanted his foot measured before we even started trying on shoes, so we would have a better idea on whether we needed to go up a half size or a full size, he immediately sat my son down and measured his foot. He proclaimed him a size ten, which seeing, as the pair he was growing out of and had worn into the store was a size 12, we begged to differ. He responded that maybe it was because my son was sitting down, so he had him stand and place his foot into the apparatus that measures the foot, and he again proclaimed him a size ten. He also replied that the measurements on it were almost exact to the sizes of shoes they carried. As several of the brands were the same that my son had been wearing for the last two years, I doubted he was correct, but humored him and told my son to choose a pair he liked to try on. He did, and the size ten, big surprise, would not even slide on my son's foot. An eleven, followed by several size twelve in different colors and mild style differences were brought out, with not a single one fitting. He was so disbelieving at this point that he had my son pull on one of the size twelve shoes, and knock his foot back into the heel to be sure that the shoe was going on the whole way. He was, alas, a size thirteen, which we had thought, but were not confident enough on to order online.

Why my son's shoe size differed from the scale so much I would have had no clear idea, until I took a good look at the item he used to measure my son's foot. The tool being used to measure was old, and upon further looking at it, the slider that should have been stationary at the heel did not go all the way back, actually looking like it had been broken off and welded back on a bit further up than its original location, two complete sizes up! While I am sure that is a once in a lifetime occurrence, it was quite the experience. I have been dealing with my son's rapid growth the past year or two, and I almost felt at the beginning of the shopping experience that I was in some sort of time tunnel and my son was miraculously shrinking his shoe size back to a size that is easily found.

It ended up the store only had one pair in a size thirteen in stock, and while they would not have been his first choice, he did like them, and we happily rang them up along with two shirts he also managed to find in the short time we had to shop. He once again has shoes that fit, and if we can get his foot to not grow for at least six to eight weeks, I will be thrilled.