These boots are made for walkin’

Here is your mission should you choose to accept it:

You have 24 hours to find a pair of size six snow boots for a nine and a half year old boy.

Good luck. You are going to need it.

Probably you should just blow off this mission and go to a bar. It’s impossible.

Had I known I would need to buy Matthew new boots I could have started looking for them months ago when they were still available. I didn’t discover the need for new boots until four days ago when I picked up a pair of wet socks by the front door.

“Matthew why are your socks all wet?” I asked.

“Because my boots have holes in the bottom.”

“Both of them?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“I don’t know.”

How odd because Matthew usually tells me every single thing that’s bothering him in regards to his personal comfort. Anything being wet usually sends him over the edge. He can’t stand tags of any kind and will complain if his clothes don’t feel right. Actually, he’ll start jumping around and screaming until I get the scissors and cut out the tag. Lauren doesn’t care if her underwear is on backward and could probably wear a shirt made entirely OUT of tags. She’s easygoing that way.

I know teenaged boys are not the most communicative specimens on the planet but Matthew is only nine and a half and I thought he’d be at least thirteen before we reached the communication breakdown years.

Since I love to shop, I thought replacing the boots would not be a problem. I’d simply go to Target and buy another pair. I’d probably get a huge discount on them and pay next to nothing. I’d buy them one size bigger and he could wear them again next winter.

I was clearly deluded and I have no grasp of how the retail inventory system works. Only Punxsutawney Phil and I are admitting its still winter. Target thinks its sandal and swimsuit season. Where does all the winter stuff go? Is there a giant secret winter warehouse somewhere that they store it in or does it all get shipped to Australia?

Next, I frantically searched the Internet and Land’s End is on my shit list. Their website is nothing but a big bait and switch. It appears that they have the boots but when I get ready to place them in my shopping cart, the only color they actually have is magenta and the only size available is four. Ditto LL Bean.com, zappos.com, and any other web site that claims to still have boots in stock.

I got out the phone book and started calling all the local shoe stores. The high school employees laughed at me.

I asked my neighbor Lisa for help. She didn’t know where I could get boots but she told me the next day at the bus stop that she’d had a dream that there were boys snow boots in Oelwein, IA.

Trish had a roommate in college named Janis whose boyfriend lived in Oelwein. Janis somehow convinced Trish and me to go home with her one weekend to stay at her much older, farmer boyfriend’s house for some sort of party.

I was so traumatized by the 48 hours I spent in Oelwein that I’m never going back, not even if the town’s welcome wagon lady hands me a cosmopolitan and a Dooney and Bourke handbag upon my arrival. Not even if every boys size six snow boot in the world is being stored there in a giant warehouse. Not even if you can grab as many pairs as you want. For free.

And if you’re reading this blog post and you live in Oelwein, I’m sorry (but get the fuck out right now before the pod people convince you to stay there for the rest of your life).

I couldn’t find boots anywhere. I admitted defeat and the thought of Matthew having to go to school with cardboard and duct tape holding his boots together was more than I could endure. I considered home schooling him for the next six weeks.

And then, I remembered something. I ran to the front closet and dug out my navy blue Sporto winter boots. They weren’t magenta. They were warm and the soles were perfectly intact. Matthew’s feet are only a little smaller than mine so they’d probably fit OK.

“Matthew, come here. Look what I found in the closet.”

He tried them on. “I don’t like them mom. I love them!”

“Do they fit?”

“Yeah!”

Matthew needed new boots and mama worked it out. Sure, I sent my son to school in his mother’s boots. Sure, some dick headed older kid could pull the old “your mama wears Sporto boots” and it would be true. And I have no idea the psychological damage I might have done by sending him to school in said boots. Someday Matthew might by lying on a shrink’s couch saying, “my mom made me wear her boots, man. She totally tricked me and I wore those boots for two years because I didn’t know it was weird.”



I don’t care. His socks are dry and his feet are warm and that’s all I care about.

Mission impossible, my ass.