Decrocked

Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been one month since my last confession. Yes, this is the season for uncovered transgressions. Though this one was not revealed by my wife or a 3-iron, but by my daughter.

Let me explain: I usually (along with my wife) take my kids to school in the morning. I don’t usually count on being out of the van at all, so I usually go wearing whatever I happen to have on. Sure, it’s been cold, but I’ll wear shorts or whatever because, like I said, I don’t expect to have to get out of the van, and it usually stays pretty warm since we keep it in the garage. This kind of arrangement usually works well enough. The kids hop out and go on their way into the school building.

Last week, though, things did not go so smoothly. We made our approach into the “drop zone”. My son ejected and landed safely. My daughter would not jump. Something about the Mayan calendar, as I recall. We aborted the mission and parked just beyond the cones. There was some limited polling of feelings and such, during which it was determined that school was boring and that she hated school. Well, I can’t honestly argue with a lot of that, but I had to fulfil my dadly duties nonetheless.

“If you don’t go to school, you can’t go to college, and then you can’t get a job and work for the rest of your life.” I’m really going to need to work on that persuasive speech. Anyway, she really is a sweetheart 99% of the time, but she wasn’t buying any of this. She had kicked her shoes off at this point, so I told her the jig was up and I was going to be carrying her in without any shoes, and she could explain this to her friends. She caused a few successful (though devious) diversions…”I want to put my shoes on first” and then “I forgot to kiss Mom goodbye” in order to slip into the nether reaches of the van.

To make a long story medium, I prevailed and carried her in one hand and her shoes and backpack in the other. At this point, school had already started and the school was placed on its usual lock down. I approached the Fort Knox defenses where I am usually subjected to a retina scan or a blood sample extraction before being granted access. But when you have a screaming kid over your shoulder they buzz you right in. I managed to take her and her items into the office to collect her “tardy of shame”. It seems that shame has lost a lot of its effectiveness since I was a child. So as I’m signing the confession, I glance at myself and am reacquainted with my apparel. I had some mismatched combination of shirt-I-slept-in and fleece jacket, plus workout-type shorts (I say workout-type shorts since there are never any actual workouts performed in them). But this was not the problem. Heck, I go to work in stuff like that. It was my choice of footwear. Wearing such horrendous items on my feet signaled to the world that I was slightly more offensive than a child pornographer. They inspire feelings of disgust everywhere they are donned. There is legislation moving its way through the state legislature to establish a sort of web-based identification system to locate offenders in your neighborhood.

Yes, I own and wear around my house a pair of Crocs. Until a month ago, I too, laughed and pointed with the rest of you. But the fact is, I have all hard floors in my house and suffer from plantar fasciitis. I believe this is Latin for “being a fat ass”. When I get out of bed in the morning, I have terrible heel and arch pain, most likely because I and many of my countrymen have overloaded our support systems far too rapidly for evolution to adapt. These particular Crocs are called “Prescription Relief”. Who knows whether this is a cheesy marketing gimmick or whether they are any different from the regular Crocs. Anyway, these disgusting clown shoes were well worth the nineteen bucks and are just the remedy. I intended to share this horrible secret with only my family, but now assuredly the word must be reaching concerned parents around the elementary school campus almost as fast as the Tiger Woods mistress count is climbing. It remains to be seen which one of us will emerge with the more tarnished reputation.

So learn from my folly, and only wear what you are willing to be seen in. Even if you think you aren’t really going out in public. Moms around the world have always told their children to wear clean underwear. They might want to amend this to include footwear that is not hideous and shameful. But I am always one to look on the bright side. At least I wasn’t wearing my parachute pants.