On Loving Students' Mismatched Crocs, Surviving a Summer as a Lifeguard, and Walking a Mile in Someone Else's Shoes My mom always pinched my toes and made sure I had a little room to grow into my shoes. Crocs are a personal metaphor for me about growing up unique and special, and it turns out, like non-compostable grocery bags and Walmart and other things I said I disliked, have made their comeback in my life. As pragmatism demands I go to the store and by plastic items that contain my groceries, like that grocery bag dangling at my side and bumping into my leg through tough times, they form a wordless memory as dependable as my dog walking beside me. The way Crocs flourished during the pandemic took me back to my early high school days when they first took over the fashion scene of my community, when, I confess, my response was pretty scathing. I remember middle school, when my parents were trying to get me to feel a certain way about Converse and French Horn. When the retro glory of these shoes was rocked by Freaky Friday rockstars, by Avril Lavigne. We watched Hoosiers at home, and in the squeaking glory of a midwestern high school basketball gym, humble converse-clad players ran up and down the court teaching me about how life is long and there is always a time for success. The hero is their strict coach who comes from a mysterious background to redeem himself and gently reminded me that there most certainly is life after dragging a French Horn case up and down a school bus aisle every day, and that the trials of my pre-teen years: bad hair days and bad outfit days will give way to a great undertaking like life that can and will humble you. My more modern basketball shoes had the same very important ankle support for running routes on the court, but more cushion on the bottom. And before they broke in, I was sometimes scared at the way they would launch me off toe-tips or stop me so fast I'd almost wipe out.
And off the court, off season, as much as I wanted to love Converse for my parents' sake, the footbed was just too narrow and I couldn't get a pair of the shoes to ever fit my feet just right. "Why, why these," I wondered. "Who do they want me to be?" I savagely demanded of the mysterious universe, feeling saddled by the shoes. Having forgotten, for a time, that when I was littler, like 7 or 8, I proudly wore a pair and loved them until I could remove my sock out of a hole in the side. I think I tried to put it back on, too, before I happily decided it was time to retire them from service. That I had tested my own for magic after watching Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez jump the fence and land in the dust in his PF Flyers. (I was convinced they were actually Converse, just renamed for the purpose of fiction, until my mom said they were another real brand of shoe that has just faded into obscurity.) Today, my elementary school-age son believes Converse are the pinnacle of athletic shoes. I thought it came from Sandlot, but looking back, maybe it is from me after all. As a mother of a young one, going to the shoe store was fun and special as I marked the little movements my baby was taking towards walking, finally getting there, and now racing the school bus up the street every day. Still stretching and filling out it little spurts. My grandma told me for more formal shoes, she had a children's shoe salesman who took care of the whole family -- that she drove from Richmond over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the only Stride Rite outlet where her children's feet were measured and shoes were appointed. So many colors and choices they did not have, and the professional fit was really important. Always go into the store, she told me. Even if the salesman doesn't meet you, know you, and provide a custom service -- online shopping, she worried, would lead to ill-fitting shoes and sore little piggies! Why did my mom ask me what I thought of Crocs when I was a teen and new to high school? Maybe to see if I wanted a pair? To see if I was worried I would lose my shoes in a flood? I was probably worried I would lose myself in a flood of consumerism. And if I did have to opt for a popular brand, for in reality, I did want brands, was fairly obsessed with fitting in, or more like standing out by my choices. But, beginning, as a maturing new high schooler, to embrace more nuanced selections and appreciate my upbringing a little bit more, all the care that went into providing my shoes that had less to do with their label, the stress of choosing shoes was compounding and frankly dreadful --- a changing lesson I marked with each passing trip to the shoe store. And what did the outcome depend on? In that choice assuredly rested my next few months of self-identity!!! Sometimes, sitting on that bench, usually in late August, satisfied by the way my toasted skin felt ice-cold in the store, by the way my tired body sank onto that freezing seat, by the crinkle of tissue that rustled up memories of summer and changing scenes and the same familiar school halls, I'd insist to my mother that comfort or fit were "off," and my mom would insist I was "just saying that" for some miniscule reason. It was a tired rehearsal. Sometimes I told the truth, and really if truth is relative to my perfect conception of comfort, sure! all the shoes were uncomfortable. I always felt like the boy who cried wolf in this situation, and usually at the end of a stressful process, when I had been guided to several good options and coached through the ream of important considerations -- money, sensibility, durability, and on and on -- I'd come away with more or less, the obligatory back-to-school shoes. And they were all great. Looking back, I truly don't remember them. Sometimes, I know, I was more jazzed about them than others, because I can remember the feeling of walking out of the store with a bag in my hand, my old shoes usually in the shoebox, me watching my toes. Selection wasn't always so difficult. But after years I began to feel worn down by all the deliberation and conflict, and with back-to school supplies, clothes, my sisters' things, I couldn't escape the store anymore without feeling spoiled for having any shoes at all. I would refuse the offer of getting a second pair and trail off saying I'd just get them another time. I think I said no to Crocs because of things I did and didn't want to be, and also for my family. Where was myself in all of the deciding? When would it truly be down to me to provide my own footwear. I longed to be free of having to engage in this stressful shoe buying process, and alone to decide. The strong, independent me was there in my response. But so was the guilty, vain and selfish me, who did want to be cool, different, and glorious. Why did I hear myself and feel like I was melting away with shame with my answer? "Ew" or "Yuck" or something like that. Throwing shade on Crocs and mass consumerism, and embracing individuality and alternative-ness, but then, feeling a little lost when I have Vans, Converse, or what other super mainstream shoe, to turn to as an "alternative" option. Wanting to be cool and glorious like my parents but also my own make and model of that, plus something deeper and more individual even than corny moms and dads imagine. When my mom asked me how I felt about Crocs, I made a choice, and more than having a good reason, it's like I felt pressure to defend my forming philosophy of life to back myself up. I think responding to Crocs offended intangible things I was working through in my head -things like loyalty, conservation and individualism that I hadn't quite satisfactorily come to conclusions about yet. And I didn't think Crocs merited an explanation to my mother. Me trying to explain how it was any the more complex an issue than how they would make me look and feel would mean betraying some very personal, mostly unformed as yet, thinking and reflecting I had been doing. Because I wasn't ready to explain to my mom about not quite fitting in, and I was doubly hushed up by my gratitude to my mom. I was trapped in one of those damned if you do scenarios. I was also Diana, startled in the woods by an onlooker. Always a young girl with new and changing aspirations for my identity. Not wishing to be betrayed midst my realization that consumerism is coming complimentary with any purchase and none of the options quite "say" everything I want them to. Not quite knowing what it is yet, the truth of all things, and not ready to share my thoughts on the matter. Not wanting to have to agree with my mom completely about the price of shoes. When she asked me about the expensive, trendy loud and colorful things, how can I explain about this moment? How many crucial considerations I had to shift through in my head. My aesthetic depended on the push and pull between fitting in with the cool kids and my only other option at the time, which felt like doing what my parents wanted me to do. And governing that was the usual oppressive fact at the shoe store about what could and could not be afforded, and when all I had to say was whether I liked or didn't, well the moment was real. Filling my own shoes required more than my impulse: to shout "leave me alone!" Deep down, I felt ashamed for choosing and sorry for feeling pressure to say why not Crocs. I think I scrambled to apologize -- I don't know how much I said about Crocs or why they were not my style. I probably tried to be positive, and describe a shoe I liked better and why? I hope or wish I did? When I was a smaller kid I wanted boys' skate shoes. When I got to middle school, I realized that obviously it wasn't cool to be like boys, and wanted but didn't have what all the popular girls wore -- Birkenstock clogs (and the Sarah Michelle Gellar hairstyle to go with it.) Now, high school was finally here, and along with it, a time when I could redefine and reinvent myself yet again, and when Crocs were on feet of men, women and children of the community – boys and girls alike, and when I wondered for a moment if my mom was giving me a choice to have something I really craved – I suddenly decided to be a little bit scathing. And knew that it was true and ok that now I had changed and wanted to be true to myself and felt an urge to distinguish myself from this footwear I saw everywhere. In truth, to blend in a little - not with the crowd but maybe in the humble and camouflaged shadows of feet tramping up and down the hallways of my school. In truth knowing I was afraid of asking for something I was afraid my mom couldn't afford. And suddenly asking myself if I was angry about that. And suddenly wondering if I was taking out my anger on the shoes for they way they looked or what they represented? Calling them lame? I felt like all the water had drained out of my personal swamp of insecurities. Colorful, lightweight, and now diversifying and bedazzled. Twenty years pass, and a couple of years ago, after all my perfectly serious baby shoe-buying craze had slowed down a little bit, I decided to buy my mom some Crocs in the color of her swim team one year. Her feet were hurting at work and besides being unlikely to degrade due to moisture, the crocs are so buoyant and lightweight. Soft on sore heels and not taxing for tired legs. My grandma loved wearing the more petite, less clunky Croc-sandals to yoga, so I thought, why not? As a young parent, going back over all the memories of my youth, reliving and trying to be wholesome, open-minded to good and bad, in order to raise a healthy and open-minded child prepared to face the world and its challenges. Absorbed yet again in agonizing shoe shopping decisions for my own precious baby, I know I just bought some Crocs for my mom, but to me it said, "I have always understood that making choices is difficult when you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, that growing up is hard when you want to be yourself and kind to others, too." To me it said, "I remember going through a funny backward phase, when shoes and clothes and fitting in were all that mattered, and then suddenly being different was everything. I know you were patient when I was learning how to be happy in my own skin, and thank you for reminding me that despite other things being more important, everyone chooses their shoes somehow, and I should always, always, always be kind." Crocs are like rubber. Chances are whatever I said about them all those years ago just bounced right off of them. And as I started out at my new job working with children in my hometown, I found that Crocs had stuck around since my high school days. I guess they were more than a fad. And the little ones who wore them proved to me why, and it gave me so much joy. Watching all those little ones out on field trips I found myself accounting for heads (hair of all kinds and states of neatness.) I found myself welcomed to my new community by graphic shirts that told me all kinds of tidbits. Hand-me downs from beloved big siblings or cousins. Characters from favorite tv shows. Sparkles, contrast, tidy, unraveling. Each day a new arrival from home. Shoes too, especially on field trips. I counted, and remembered each little one better by their Sketchers with the curling Velcro like little mustaches or Hermes' wings, or their favorite Jordans, or their silly, mismatched, sweet or stinky socks. Each little kid was delivered to me this way each day to watch carefully, and I was charged with duties beyond maintaining their safety, like reinforcing their good choices, and promoting a safe environment. Teaching the kids where to step. I have a collie now, who loves to nip at my ankles as I walk downstairs each morning. Everywhere we go, people shout, "Lassie, did you save Timmy from the well?" My collie loves all people and chasing children when they run fills him with joy. I have to make sure he doesn't herd them as roughly as he would a sheep, but I love thinking about how giving this working dog a restrained, yet purposeful life is easy for me because I love playing with the kids - my son's friends - in our neighborhood. And I had two students at my job- brother and sister - who made me love Crocs - and maybe, as I slowed down and focused on work, letting myself change, (and having such a great reason to,) maybe they helped me love myself a little better. They wore them every day. With socks in the winter. They were always first ready when it was time to go anywhere or go home, because their shoes slid right on. They hopped around the foam mats like frogs when the children got too excited while running to grab them. Sometimes they got grimy and dirty because the kids wore them every day, every-where. Crocs came to me on the feet of these little awesome kids. I felt they were there to remind me that having fun is the most important thing. Trying to make my grandma proud, always worrying about putting my son in just the right shoes, I was always more settled when my son had a pair of shoes that he loved and wore all the time. Frustrated when I had to fight with him about looking nice or wearing nice things, or shoes at all for that matter (those were happy arguments.) I was so happy to work with some older kids who just did their thing every single day, and seemed so comfortable in their own selves regardless of whether their shoes fit -- who tied their own sneakers and rocked their shoes and selves. The Crocs siblings seemed to always be tumbling out of the van or into line with smiles on their faces. I played them Elton John and told them they were the "Me and Suzie" from the song. To me, the innocence of teenage years lives in that song. I was never one to be in the middle of the dances, but these kids, so at ease in their Crocs, and underneath it, attuned to that silliness of crocodiles either eating your foot, or that you're rolling around on their backs like they are strange water-skis? Those little swivel pieces the crazy bugging eyes that hypnotize and lure you into a Louisiana bayou. These kids - when I really got to know them - had all the amazing zesty flavor of sweet and spice and surprised me all the time with their kindness and keenness. Kids shared their humor with me or their seriousness or their wisdom and I always knew it came right from their homes and their hearts. And now, I have heard hero-drama stories of camp counselors stopping to whip their Crocs into four-wheel drive mode to run faster and get the epi-pen for a camper having an anaphylactic reaction. Or silly songs about "blame it on my croots" - a strange branch of lifestyle-crossover Crocs. Or seen Crocs that look like monster trucks (a step beyond 4-wheel drive mode Crocs.) These happen to seem less absurd when compared with other platform models -- like the exaggerated platform clog -- another eccentrified country-living style option. Crocs are functional. And their hyper-consumer-bent bothers me less now than it might have as a grouchy teenager. …Or the precious pull-on rainboots that look just like the big beach bags that match them. Emerging from a pandemic, I didn't need to see complexities and hard-to-understand things. I wanted easy. I wanted to help these kids every day to be kind and caring, to be maybe the first to dance at their school dance someday, or the one who knows how to dance in the rain. As I have ventured beyond the first safe little school into bigger ponds, working with middle schoolers who "lived" at the pool all summer, I performed strange community jobs like "lifeguarding," which required not-really watching over semi-independent teens who have mobility and freedom within their community (I'm just a lifeguard, and not a teen one who is actually these kids' friends.) I felt so at home and like I could really let loose a little and use my self-control and responsibility at work while judiciously sprinkling in a range of other spicy values like silliness, honesty and compassion. Oddly, at the same time, I felt like I had tumbled myself into a job that connected me with my family values. Working at a pool just like my mom gave me a whole different kind of confidence that was really fun to exercise. And yet again finding out that in many ways I am not smarter than a 5th grader, and definitely not a middle schooler, yet maybe wiser, I made real, albeit mismatched friendships with the kids at the pool. My favorite part of my time in the bigger kid schools and working at the pool was seeing students sharing their crocs. Bedazzled and covered with charms, like emojis, reminding me of friendship bracelets and charms from my youth, I marveled as these resilient wonderful kids emerged from a pandemic, and how even though they can't share food and probably shouldn't share shoes, they do. I'd be more mad if it was my child coming home with only half the pair of shoes I had bought them. I'd be more responsible for in-tact footwear at after-school care. I definitely didn't let it slide. At the pool, I felt more free. Free to comment and raise my eyebrow at the fashion choices and return their gaze with a big, big smile once I had their attention. And I even busted out that old pair I had bought for my mom. Crocs were on the feet of most of the lifeguards. They don't get hot in the sun. (Don't ask me what strange chemicals make that sturdy marshmallow-ey material so unreactive and indestructible.) I didn't mind trying to fit in with the cool fifteen and sixteen-year-olds. I really felt proud in my strange role. I was the newest lifeguard, and unabashed about learning. Sure, I had lots of wisdom to offer, and had to try and keep to myself a lot too. I didn't have an office though. I was the mom. I was the implant, the spy. And when it came to actually doing my job, I was delighted to find I had generational work experience. I was being my unique self, fitting in and having fun, and even feeling successful. Deep undercover, I found myself in a very safe place that felt like home. I was being myself so completely. I was... wearing crocs? Something still didn’t sit quite right with me. The whole loving myself more journey had brought me to a place where I had always been kind of refusing and rebelling from. Putting on Crocs -- it wasn't like there was a thorn inside them, but something gently asking me if I was venturing too far in one philosophical direction. Shouldn’t I, indeed, still be true to the past version of myself? To let on a little, I had reached out for this job out of a desperate kind of necessity at a time when I was feeling lost. Besides being readily welcomed and finding so many familiar faces there, which was a true relief that felt like a big karmic payoff, even though karma wasn’t getting me ahead in life, but rather helping me cope and climb to the surface. That felt ok. And work was like experiences in the wake of my emotional tide -- where my parents used to be when I needed them, about ten miles behind my deep inner experiences. Administering to things I had already been done feeling, my job comes to me with responsibilities that need heeding. Washing over me like a consequence of sense, my day-to-day buried me in tangibles that sometimes reflected echoes from my deepest, passed, already-spent feelings. And also like a stern, wise parent, to show me things I hadn’t understood about my previous job and what they expected from me. That position had been found for me by my mom, and though I did it my own way, the things I didn’t do as well - the active searching – maybe it was just something I had never become -- a lifeguard. Because I was listening, looking at shoes. Like Converse - maybe they thought I’d be more like my mom? I did not like it when I was told I was wrong. Learning to lifeguard helped me see a little more of a person that I never wanted to be. Growing up and not wearing my converse, I wanted to adventure into my own universe. Then going to work where I felt my family expected me to be, I felt like I was showing my respect for my upbringing, but also having to prove myself as an individual and stay true to the choices I started making a long time ago. Even simple ones like the shoes I wore or the friends I made. I was a lonely rebel then, and why would things have changed? When I had to take one step further, it was the knowledge of myself, and Crocs. They helped me come afloat. I wasn't drowning. I was working in a new environment that I found very challenging, because undercover and oddly appointed for the position as I was, when it came down to it, again and again, the lifeguard job demanded we all look at one another, us guards, and know we had to work together because people's lives are on the line - children and grownups alike. Guarding was new to me, and if the more experienced guard was 10 years younger than me, I had to respect that. I was a single mom, worried about paying rent, waiting for school to open up in the fall so I could start substitute teaching again. Humbled by this job and life, And here I was in my mom's Crocs that I had bought, working as hard as I could to get more shifts. Trying to respect my fellow coworkers and strengthen our team. Really trying to make big important decisions every day in a seasonal and fun employment that still demanded our full attention and presented a potentially life-threatening hazard at all times. Bitter reality for me was just this – a summer spent working in my mom’s field of work, and along with many discoveries I made - like just how much you can passively pick up about how pool filters function from 10 years of offhand comments about work at the dinner table, how proud and useful you can be from having just a bit of additional relevant workplace knowledge, but along with this, realization of the real personal risk one takes on while having this kind of responsibility at work. Money-wise, the ground underneath my feet had really vanished like a California mudslide. And I had taken on an unexpected burden of adjusting to the demands of lifeguarding. Fortunately, one of the best parts of the job was the diversity of the staff. Not everyone on the team was geared to go into the nursing field or already working on their EMT licenses, although some of those incredible high school and college students were. Besides them, I met artists, pool lovers (with pool toe,) swim team captains, and band captains, student-athletes and babysitters, kids who lived near the pool who had been roped in by their friends. Another friend who was desperately seeking a job that fit their life better than the last. While always aware of the utmost demand of our position, I really appreciated our community for the parts everyone contributed towards making our team successful. And the way we did not hesitate to commend anyone who made a save. Still, the urgency of my needs mounted. I liked being in the chair for the most part and found that it completely absorbed my attention. I was above my problems in my personal life up there and I liked the constant handoffs, the shifting of the guard and the sounds of the water and people. But, keeping cool was certainly harder when the pool was busy, and harder still, when I found myself chasing leaf matter around the bottom of a water basin with a partly-clogged vacuum on the end of a 20 foot pole. During cleaning shifts, I was grappling with anxiety and channeling it through this activity that demanded the patience of a person who can stand the sun, can stand to see tedious gains and return every day to the job where problems grow back like algae on the wall of the diving well. I was coping with life among teens who were working for lots of different reasons that I couldn't 100% relate to, but were, I reminded myself, just as focused on their jobs, and with such visions forming and excitement mounting for their futures, I found inspiration that lifted me beyond the sadness I felt when I was staring into the water. And I had friends too, outside of work, who gave me quirky ideas to think about, diverting me from the ruminations on my past that came along with wearing Crocs and working for, (I felt like,) my mom. Did you ever think about how the bleach that detoxifies the water is a crystal in its solid form? How do you think, my artist/swimmer friend asked me, it affects the appearance of the water? Why does that bleachy pool sparkle like that? And all the while, despite my own venture into darker places, as I wondered whether donning the Crocs took me too far into a certain philosophical realm, the community pool was, indeed, sparkling like an intangible diamond. Dancing like a disco. More frenetic than Elton John's piano. Fierce like lightning, and so beautiful and alluring. Patrons came and went, and I was honestly just relieved that for once I wasn’t serving them food. That I wasn't the babysitter. I was vacuuming the pool in my Crocs in all the heat and frenzy of a modern disco fever dream, so white-hot it was silent - trying to keep my sanity matched against a tedious and mentally taxing undertaking. Quite proud and I guess this is what it takes to feel pretty on the outside, and so deep in self-questioning meditations. Keeping that white-bottom pool clean was like keeping water cupped in your hands. Maintaining artificial expectations, I was on the dark side of paradise. I was thinking of every dazy rock album I have ever reviewed that featured the light and shadows of the inside of one of these things - a photo on a white background. Now I feel like I get that vibe. I always thought the pool was just for fun and recreation. Staring into it, trying to see the leaves on the bottom, I'm blinded by light and beginning to see flashing and dancing lines in flashing layers. As my mind tried to grasp, to remember, to contain, to resolve and remove. To lasso and delete. To see it all and still see the bottom was like realizing how complex a Beach Boys song is. Before I overtaxed myself and became dizzy I had to step back and remember it's just a pool. But with work, tangible work to be done. And me in the midst of it, trying to shine and sparkle and be true in my setting. Facing my new responsibility took me back to hills I tried to climb in college, like organizing all the threads of Ovid's Metamorphosis, or understanding the character arcs in Tolstoy's War and Peace. Did all that lead up to me being the newest lifeguard? I am just a struggling young adult, and it was nice to fit in when work was so difficult. To wear the Crocs and just pray they accepted me. It was really a time I was most afraid of failure. When I was a student, I always felt safe. I never stressed too much about grades or performance, mostly just finding what I liked to do or something meaningful and respectable to do with my education. When I was a childcare professional, I knew I did my best every day and I was never afraid. I had already been through so many experiences raising my son, and it was easy to see childcare as an extension of my life's work. But it was a job that had been given to me, and when I didn’t know how to do it, the responsibilities felt piled down upon me from above, like I was bound to crack underneath the pressure. When I was a lifeguard, I felt like I had found safe harbor from drifting. I did some of that work I loved with kids, but there was a whole new set of responsibilities that I didn't expect would be such a challenge. I frequently worried I was the worst one, that I would make a mistake -- and as usual, having the right shoes helped. And the moment I voiced these troubles at work, my fellow guards gave kind words that were a comfort and literally like a hug. Children in my schools, teens at work or friends and colleagues. The bond of friendship and community is there for us all to take part of in various ways. Of giving and receiving, I think the receiving is felt the most when needed the most. I really felt it out there on the edge of my comfort zone. People were so kind and united and that was the only way, I thought, to get through a job like this. Maybe, I wondered, I never grew up under that kind of pressure. I have been an artist, I always wanted to be a writer. It was never my job to actively search for distressed swimmers. I was always looking for a friend who was feeling down, or trying to understand what word choice is all about. Or how daffodils meant anything to industrial England and why. Other subjects helped keep my focus grounded. Studying English, I felt, helped me to sharpen my writing. I was always getting in trouble for being too carefree at afterschool care, playing with the kids and letting my mind wander to their Crocs and existential things, and trying to bring out their confidence and their personalities. I know that swapping Crocs is more radical for a post-pandemic germaphobe than friendship bracelets. I imagine that big feet or small feet or off-brand or different shoes kids might be left out of participation, but fun-wise, they and I can admire the silly spectacle. And I see this display of friendship more on boys which makes me smile. Underneath this cute trend, because we don't share drinks or food at school, and we might drain the hallway sanitizer dispensers once per week. We might still mask up when we aren't feeling 100%, and we might think more about social distance. Our families still might be spending more days in our house shoes, still feeling the habits we made a year or two ago, and not totally back into the whirl of world activities around us. Maybe a positive effect that the pandemic has had is that we are a little more caring and aware of the health and well-being of others around us. We are a little more conscious of what healthy means, what healthy people need, and how to promote wellness. In our schools, kids might need more attention to their overall wellness. They might want more attention paid to the challenges we face growing up that shouldn't be stigmatized, that should be shared. Maybe the pandemic has pushed these kids further towards a rebellious kindness. Our shoes are proud and colorful. Our shoes are inclusive, celebratory, vibrant, and innovative. Our shoes are like a foundation of ourselves. We chose them with our caregivers, or they have been given to us. They help us do the things we love. They are appropriate and springy. They are somber or austere. They are sleek or gravity-defying. They are representative; they are aspirational. Well-worn or magical. Kindness, I remind myself, is radical. Maybe the pandemic has pushed these kids to be a little more like someone I know who washed the feet of his friends for all to see. Whose acts have been with me every late night I was up watching my child toss and turn and sleep through a fever. It's been such a rollercoaster each time challenges in my life bring me to a place where I can see the underlying common sense of great stories, beneath them lie humble truths about what it takes to get along and survive. The students aren't afraid to express their friendship and like to share their style with others. When it comes to their hopes and dreams, whether they will one day make a footprint on the dust of the moon or squeak up and down the halls of a hospital ward, their shoes will help them get there, and at school, on their way, they are not afraid to walk a mile in their friend's shoes. You tell them they can't share pencils during a pandemic and they will show up steppin' in their best friend's stinky toe jam. I don't know what I needed to hear. Was it a gentle reminder from Elton John that my mom wanted to buy his albums a long time ago, wanted to find the perfect sneakers and once went through growth spurts, couldn't wait to get to the next shoe size, looked down at her toes and tried to find a rhythm at the school dance. Positivity can be hard to get a child to emulate as it is to get them to don a pair of shoes they don't like. I know when it came to the big teen question: "How do you feel about Crocs," I faced a paradoxical situation in front of my mom and didn't know how to talk my way out of saying I didn't like Crocs when I knew that was unkind, but rationalizing my preference for another footwear just didn't seem like a worthwhile pursuit so I just bowed my head. When I looked back at all the shoes I had been through, all the hand-me-downs my sisters had had, the times growing up I truly don't know where my shoes came from, and the truth of the matter -- that I probably hadn't cared so much then about how I looked as I do now. Precipitating right out of the paradox, melting into a new formless state of evasion, non-opinion, questioning, maybe being many little floating robots like in Michael Chriton's "Prey," ready to sense, emulate, and dismantle. That was me then. Cringey. Forced into a philosophical desert (really it could be worse,) for shunning a footwear, and then shaming myself for my idolatry of shoes, confused and clinging to memories like when Jesus told me I should be dressed for a party. I must walk a line, I guess. Knowing that when I wanted to be unique: that is good, and also now, knowing that part of my identity is my parents plan for me, my way of life I have learned from them. And now, as an adult, putting on a pair of red, white and blue crocs and quietly feeling proud of the way they matched my red guard suit and also a little like I was clinging to the dignity I had at a job that challenged me so deeply - my choice to serve despite being flawed and full of imperfections. I was afraid, and I did feel like I had to collaborate with my friends to respond to a higher calling. And when I was stepping into a world I had shunned, and spiritually divided over liking and disliking, those kids being rebellious in their kindness lent me strength and a sense of victory. Even though I was in a pair of shoes my past self wouldn’t have liked to approve of, I was in a seasonal employment, a temporary place, and happy knowing that through life’s ups and downs, I don’t always have to be a complete version of myself. If life is a journey that winds and weaves, it’s ok if I take my time, and pick through it in pieces. To sometimes be more like someone else. To share in other peoples joy and success. If sometimes my identity is something I earn based on things I’ve been given, if at work sometimes I’m making spiritual gains as I learn, if I am more passive and take time to discover unknown things, like my initial reconsideration of the value of Crocs to society -- it’s ok for me to wander one way and then another. To discover the unexpected. To be new, or partly-qualified or imperfect. I can explore those places that I might have rejected as a younger version of me, and it’s ok to find them still there, to enter into a new state of compromise or treatise with Crocs and jobs and err on, or proceed in any direction of my choosing. To be Absolutely, Sweet, to Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, or to take comfort knowing that Any Day Now, I Shall Be Released. To be like the Dire Wolf, or Cassidy while I wander partly in a state of dreams. To aspire to write my Tintern Abbey, or rejoice in the time I shan't say I wasted trying to define Shakespeare's humor. To fill my life with lots of things, to balance the noise of expectations and adventure into the unknown universe that is uniquely mine to discover. To wander on from an incomplete version of myself. To draw a compromise with invisible dragons. What do shoes have to do with me? Not too much and still some for sure. I'm kind of hovering in a conscious realm where shoes matter, consumerism matters, choosing matters, and yet communities matter, and community health and well-being matters. Some things are more important than shoes, but shoes are important. I might be crystallizing myself a little bit as I try to go back through and make sense of my youth, to understand my younger self, and the path I took to get to adulthood. My mind was like a swarm of locusts then, or maybe a nest of bees that someone prodded. My heart was me -- a me that my mind defended. And my body and souls of my feet were humble and I wanted to be more like someone who knows that health starts from the ground up, who cared for people from their roots and the root of humanity, who found wholeness in community. I've gone from wishing I was more like someone else, to just wanting to be myself. People (really, they did!) made fun of Birkenstocks and called them Jesus shoes. People made fun of Crocs for unknown amorphous blobular strange reasons. For plastic artificial and mass-produced reasons. Yet NYT reports their customer base is likely to buy the shoe again. The kids I see wearing them wear them in. Crocs stand the test of time and though strange, not quite space-age, not really retro, garden-ey, hous-ey, now athleisure-ey and actually kind of cool, moldable, transformed into Black Panther - like foam versions of something warrior-like, knight like, maybe just clawed to pieces and still just foam. Aspirations tacked on tacky shoes. Charms that have been done, overdone, and transcending beyond those, now the whole shoe is a tradeable item that friends can share and borrow. Cool kids are a little medieval. Cool kids have walked through the valley. They might have faced a dragon. Their shoes have maybe nearly not outrun a jaguar. Cool kids are mysterious, they care for each other. They are inclusive and proud from their very feet up. Healing can be spontaneous and sometimes looks like laughter. These kids have taken in the fear and loss caused by a pandemic and they are ready to bounce back like a strange rubber shoe. People Started Buying Crocs During the Pandemic. They Can’t Stop. - The New York Times (nytimes.com) How to Create Substantive Connections to the Community Surrounding Your School | Edutopia How to Make Your Classroom a Healing Place | Edutopia
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AuthorWe are Kieran and Michelle, two 32-year-old William & Mary grads living in Virginia. Archives
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