6 stores, 2 hours, no deal

My favorite girl needs some new kicks.

Her feet are officially bigger than mine. Not a big deal, really; I’m not a sentimental mom who gets upset at the idea of the little kids becoming big kids, and let’s be honest: my size 6 1/2 feet aren’t too hard to surpass.

But a big deal because we looked at a gazillion pairs of shoes, and she didn’t like any of them.

6 stores, 2 hours, no shoes.

And not for a lack of trying.

This kid has always had big feet. We could see them in the sonogram images a decade ago when she was still percolating in my belly. We referred to the baby as a jackrabbit, and she did not disappoint.

Last year, in third grade, she started wearing some of my shoes. Mostly TOMS and tennis shoes, which she respectfully asked to borrow and usually remembered to put away afterward.

Those were the good old days.

When she told me that her tennis shoes were too small, I showed her every pair in my closet, hoping she would wear a pair of mine and buy me some time so I didn’t have to rush out and shoe shop right away.

Silly woman.

Should’ve known that wasn’t going to fly. One pair was too white. Another had a pink swoosh, and she doesn’t do pink. Yet another had too much red in the trim, and she despises red. The last one was just “blech” as she put it.

So off to the mall we went, with visions of shoes that are not too white, no pink, no red, and no blech in our heads. She said she prefers Nike, and she thought she might want black tennis shoes, so we looked at black shoes.

This one has a little net inlay in front of the swoosh that did not meet her approval.

This one was a “weird shade of black.”

This one looks too much like cleats. 

This one looks too much like lace.

This one might have worked, and actually made it onto her feet, but was a little too small and there wasn’t another pair in her size.

Moving onto shoes that aren’t black.

This one was too silver.

This one was too white, but the stripes were kinda cool.

This one had too many holes. 

This one almost worked, but the blue is too royal.

This one might have worked if the yellow wasn’t so bright.

This one was too dotty.

This one would have worked, but the swoosh looked suspiciously like it might be red.

Oh, mercy.

Maybe it’s time to try another brand.

Reebok is good. Lots of kids wear them, and their design isn’t quite as elaborate as Nike’s: no lace, no mesh, no strange colors of blue. But no, none of the Reeboks were quite right, either.

Moving on to Asics. Super cushy and comfortable. Nah, not crazy about the 4-way stripe.

Ok, fine, let’s try Under Armour. Lo and behold, there was a pair of Under Armour tennies that warranted a try-on. Looking good, I’m thinking; maybe this fruitless search isn’t so fruitless after all.

Big sigh. The Under Armours were a little big and slipped on her heel when she walked.

My last hope was Adidas. Come on, Adidas — don’t let me down.

Yowza, there’s a black pair with greenish-blue stripes that she likes. Woohoo! And they’re on sale — even better.

Oh wait, there’s only one box for the black pair with the greenish-blue stripes in the whole store. And it contains a pair of size 12 shoes. All sorts of cuss words were running through my head at this point. Turns out, that pair was the last one of the previous year’s model; there are no more. The current model, however, is readily available. And it has a tangerine-colored trim with a teeny bit of yellow. Tangerine is THE color right now, which Little Miss Fashion-Forward Jackrabbit knows. I’m thinking this may work, I’m getting my hopes up.

But not for long: the tangerine is deemed too red, not the vibrant, trendy tangerine at all.

Which brings us straight back to Square One. Without new shoes.