Day Four

I was talking last night with my niece Elisa who is 18, and I was reminding her that for many many years Kat and I bought her pretty Christmas dresses to wear to our party and other holiday events. She reminded me that I also purchased her shoes too.

I think she was 4 at the time, and Kat and I had already bought her dress and given it to her. The day of the party I had to run to Wal-mart to get ice and a few other things, and trying to entertain the 4 year old I took Elisa with me. When we parked the car I told her we needed three things, and told her what the three things were and asked her to remember them. Then I asked her as we walked in, “what were those three things?”And “How many things?” I was trying to make a game of remembering what we needed and staying on point so we could get out of the store in a timely manner.

Everything was going well until we came upon a large aisle display of Christmas shoes. They had garishly sparkly high heel prostitute looking shoes with holly leaves painted on them, red wizard of oz shoes, and little girls velvet slippers with Christmas wreathes embroidered on the toes. Elisa was fascinated. Trying to stay on point I asked, “How many items do we need?” “Three, plus SHOES” she answered. I reminded her that shoes were not on the list, and she countered with “but I want them to be on the list.”

I tried to tell her no, but she said “please uncle Jedson, please buy me these shoes.” Who can resist that? They were only $10 and they were kinda cute so I said ok. But then we could not find any in her size, in fact the only ones we could find were two sizes too small. Of course, those were the very ones she wanted. I tried to explain to her that they did not fit, and we could not get them. She assured me they did fit, and sat down and put them on to demonstrate. Sure enough she could get them on, and she could get them buckled. I wasn’t convinced thought, and I really did not want her to be wearing shoes that didn’t fit. I told her they would hurt her feet when she wore them, and she offered the ultimate rebuttal “But I am tough like my daddy.”

Now, if you know my brother in law Clyde, you know that is not an argument you can counter. So I bought the shoes.

She did wear them to the party and took them off once they started to hurt, which was fine. Then Christmas eve we went down to Okmulgee and went to church with Stephanie and Elisa. Elisa wanted to wear her Christmas shoes. I noticed as we walked into the church that she was walking very slowly. “Do your feet hurt?” I asked. She adamantly denied that they did. But as the service went on, with the walking to the front for the candles, and then walking to courtyard to make a circle, it was pretty obvious that she was limping. When her 4 year old determination gave out and Elisa started whining that her feet hurt, Stephanie told me, “You did this, you deal with it.” So I picked Elisa up and carried her for the rest of the service. When the service, and the requisite meet and greet after was finally over and we got back to the house and I was helping Elisa get ready for bed I discovered that yes the shoes were too small, but that she had worn them on the wrong feet all night.