The Red Shoes Diary

Tiny E needed some new shoes. Not just “shoes” she needed red shoes and not just any foot coverings designed to protect her feet from the environment, she needed faux craux, the cheaper version of the real thing. The cheap plastic shoe the rich and dumb buy $50 a pop can be bought by the frugal and the smart for $5, a cheaper, greener alterative to the over priced retail version. For your $5 you get shoes that when exposed to natural sunlight will actually begin to compost themselves! The real shoes can take months to do that.

Top be honest, I don’t know how much real crocs cost. Until a few months ago I didn’t know croc shoes from a crock of shit. If whatever it is isn't being sold 75% off at Poverty Barn, chances are I'm not going to know about it. In the three seconds of thought I spent to the issue I thought maybe crocs were some kind of new-fangled duck shoe thing. I certainly didn’t know they were talking about and buying bling for, plastic shoes. I kind of take it that crocs are the beanie babies of the early 21 century.

Myself, I don’t wear plastic shoes. I’ve done the whole plastic shoe thing, I had a plastic shoe collection which I wore with my Mexican wedding dress collection. I also had a new blister every day and walked with a limp. It was 1985-86 and the plastic shoe de’jour were called Jellies.

But Tiny E doesn’t know from Jellies. She is still too young to know about the pleasure/pain relationship our kind has with shoes. She does however know a cute shoe when she sees one. While she’s too young yet for really hard core shoeage, she is too old for Heelarious Heels



If these had been on the market two years ago, I would have bought her a pair. She would love these, if she had a pair of these, I can guarantee she would have learned how to say CUTE months earlier then she did. They are a little Cathyish, on closer inspection, but I think that can be overlooked. A girl can never start to build her collection of nearly identical black pumps soon enough.

But. Lets talk reality. In reality, as cute as those shoes are, she wouldn’t have gotten a lot of wear out of them. These shoes are not made for walking and Tiny E will walk right over you. It’s who she is, she has places to go and Gawd help you if you are in her way. Girl has an agenda and a Black Berry and she’s interviewing assistants and she has a flight to catch and a new Signing Time downloaded onto her Iphone and you are making her late. She needs shoes she can walk in, run in, jump into puddles in and that’s not going to happen in pumps, even those ones they advertised as being pumps you could play basketball in because I bet they don’t come in childrens sizes . So for the time being Baby Girl’s athletic shoe needs will be handled of by these



...And her $5 Wallyworld faux crauxs. She has meetings to go to and classes to attend and every weekend another birthday party. Girl baby is on the go, and she can’t go anywhere without the right shoes.