So the time came when my ten year olds daughter’s fashion sense has kicked in and she is beginning to notice what other girls her age are wearing. Going to a uniform school, I have been able to bypass the usual requests of a specific shirt or skirts, but recently she came to me to have a sit down. It went like this…
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“ Well I wanted to ask you a question, just a question and you will probably say no, because you are going to tell me that we have nice things and I shouldn’t be concerned with what other people have but…”
I held my breath wondering where this was going…
“ but Mommy, can we just go out and look at a new pair of shoes like the other kids wear. I don’t even know if my shoes have a brand on them and I would just like to look at other shoes, but you don’t have to buy anything unless you want to. Could we?”
Now I remembered back to the days when my boys were younger. Unfortunately they were so tall and big that I had to special order their tennis shoes from the Nike store in the mall because that was the only place I could get them thirty years ago living out in the country-even on a really strict budget I really had no choice.
Maybe it was the way she asked already knowing that we are on a budget, already knowing that we have nice things just not always designer things or maybe it was just that she had already been working so hard in school for the first two weeks that I immediately answered, “Yes, we can definitely go look.”
Look we did and we found a pair of Nikes that were almost my adult size on sale so I bought them for her. She immediately took them home and started taking pictures of them and drawing sketches of them with various outfits. She has suddenly decided she wants to be a fashion designer not a teacher.
Words cannot even tell you how grateful she was, but what was even better was that she asked if she could donate her old pair of shoes to the shelter near by along with some clothing and several nice lunchboxes that she was no longer using.
Something tells me that these shoes are going to last twice as long as the other cheaper brand mainly because she will take care of them and actually tied them today instead of slipping them on like slippers but that her second thought was to give her good shoes just outgrown to kids to have nothing because we have volunteered at the shelter made me feel even better.
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Nike image came from the Nike website and I was not paid for using their name. My daughter just happened to pick Nike and feel better in their shoes than in other shoes.
