A
REAL SHOE-IN
My
wife and I very rarely disagree when it comes to the rules of the house.
Take,
for example, when my wife decided that it was perfectly acceptable for
our 3-year-old daughter to remove every cushion from the couch and line
them up in the living room. I did not see the point in having cushions
off of the couch, much less on the floor. My wife, however, can develop
elaborate backstories that somehow make her right most every time.
ME:
Allie, put the cushions back on the couch.
ALLIE:
But Mommy said I could.
MOMMY:
I told her that she could put them down there because she was playing
school and the cushions were her classmates and besides, if we put
them down, we can sit down on them and read books, and are you saying
you want an illiterate child? Because I think that rules that discourage
reading are a bad idea. What next? Rules that will discourage social
graces, proper hygiene and general lawfulness?
ALLIE:
I win.
But
once in a while, an issue will come up that leaves me no choice but to
stand my ground. The latest issue of this ilk was the shoe issue. Allie
loves to wear her mother’s shoes. Allie only picks out hard-soled shoes
and then proceeds to clomp around the house. It’s OK when she’s upstairs,
as there is carpet to cushion the pounding. But when she gets downstairs
onto the hardwood floors, the clopping sounds like the Budweiser
Clydesdales are cruising through the house. So
I laid down the law and told Allie that she was no longer allowed to wear
Mommy’s shoes. This did not go over well, because Mommy had apparently
already OK’d the usage, and Allie knows that my rules are suggestions
that do not become permanent without Mommy’s OK.
My
wife and I converged for a summit on the shoe issue. She asked me why
it
bothered me so much. I told her that it was scratching up the hardwood
floors. She quickly called my bluff, seeing as how I will routinely
slide couches and chairs around looking for the remote. “Besides,”
she said. “Little kids like to play with grown-up shoes. It’s what
they do. I bet you used to wear your mother’s shoes around when you were
a kid.” There
was a long pause as we both assessed the psychological Pandora’s box that she considered
opening.
She
quickly saved the moment. “OK,
so it was your sisters who probably wore them, but regardless, kids like
to wear big people’s shoes!”
I
explained to her that I did not need a reason as to why she couldn’t wear
adult shoes for play. “Because I said so” is a perfectly legitimate excuse.
My wife explained to me that it was, in fact, a perfectly legitimate excuse, except when it was idiotic and devoid of logic or reason. I think she was hinting that I fell into the latter category. So I opted for one last ditch effort to stop the shoe insanity. “But what about the fact that she leaves the shoes downstairs?” My wife glanced around and, with a knowing glance, showed me that there are roughly 43,000 pairs in our downstairs, as apparently no shoes are allowed to return to their original closets of origin. We have waged that war on numerous occasions before, so I quickly retreated because, let’s face it, I don’t need to lose again. In the end, my wife agreed to a compromise. Allie would be allowed to wear the shoes, and I would agree not to complain about it. She explained it in a manner that somehow sounded solid, but I think I may have been taken slight advantage of. The up side, I suppose, is that there will be an end to the madness. Little girls grow out of the phase of wearing mommy’s shoes. And once she’s done, there will be no one else wanting to wear the shoes. After all, her brother will never pull the same thing. Boys don’t do that. Regardless of what my sisters tell you.