Ding Dong, the Shoes are Gone!

      Three summers ago, around the 4th of July, I was shopping with the kids at Walmart. I came across their cheap $3 red, white & blue flip-flops.  I bought them and figured they'd last a few weeks.  Was I ever wrong.
       Have you ever had a kid who couldn't give up a pair of shoes? I'm guilty of holding on to clothes I'll never wear again, but never shoes.  Shoes don't hold any nostalgia for me.  For Lanie, they do. These red flip-flops pictured above were Lydia's originally.  They funneled down to Lanie last summer when she could barely keep them on.  Oh how I detest shoes that don't stay on feet.  I am easily irked when I see she's picked out the red flips.  They fall off in the car, they fall off while sitting in a grocery cart only to have to retrieve them twenty times and they fall off as she runs.  They are the only flip flops she owned, well second-hand, and we tried to keep it that way.
     This summer, the shoes came back out even though they were too small and they went with everything - pink, purple, orange - it didn't matter.  My friend Kendra (who gave me the shoe blog idea) recognized Lanie's affinity to them.  Once when Lanie left them at her house, she tried to toss them in the trash, because I told her, but her daughter Ella found them and insisted she give them back.  And she did. And Lanie continued to wear the too small, so dirty, second-hand, Walmart flip flops. 
     This weekend, while out to dinner with Kendra and her family, Lanie and Ella were running down the sidewalk through the Town Center.  Not more than 20 steps were taken when Lanie tripped and down she went, along with her busted, beloved flip-flop.  It didn't take me more than a minute to swoop her up in my arms and make a bee-line across the street to PayLess Shoes where these, also cheap, flip-flops were waiting for her.  We asked the sales clerk to toss the tired, 4th of July flip-flops but not before snapping a picture.  I don't think I'll miss the shoes, that's not my thing.  But I will miss the regular, "Oh, Lanie, those shoes?  Are you sure?" only because it was our routine, and a good routine is hard to let go.