Luke Walker and the new shoes

Luke was having a stressful day.

“It’s not fair!” he thought, “I don’t want new shoes; I don’t need new shoes.”

He looked down at his left plimsoll for proof and was satisfied that he could hardly see his big toe.

“In fact,” he said out loud, “I’m sure if someone who dint know it was there looked at my feet, they wun’t notice it at all.”

Mum disagreed.  She quite unreasonably insisted that a big toe sticking through a hole in one’s shoe was an unmistakable sign that it was time to get new ones.

It was 4.17pm.  Luke and Mum were in the fifth and final shoe shop their home town had to offer.

“This is it Luke,” Mum said testily, “this is the last one. We will be buying shoes from this shop.”

She picked out four different styles and put them down in front of him.

“Choose one.”

Luke looked at them with disgust.

“ Brown?  You want me to wear brown shoes?  I am not wearin’ brown shoes!”

Mum removed the two brown ones and, through gritted teeth said of the remaining two,

“Choose one of these or I will choose for you!”

If he had to have new shoes when he didn’t even need new shoes he would have chosen blue ones.  He would have chosen blue plimsolls.  They were comfortable. They were good for running in.  And blue happened to be his favourite colour.  But Mum said plimsolls were not proper shoes.  She said they were not suitable for wearing in wet weather.  She said they were not smart enough for school.  She said he had to have those shiny sort of hard shoes that give you blisters for the first two weeks.  Luke had put up strong resistance all day long but now it looked like he would have to compromise.  It came down to two different black shiny shoes and one of them had tassels. 

It was clear that he wasn’t going to get the plimsolls so the best he could do was make sure he didn’t get the tassels.  He chose the lace-ups.  Mum exhaled.

“Finally,” she said.

 After Luke had tried them on and walked up and down on the carpet in them, and Mum had squeezed the toe ends of them to see how much growing room there was, the shop lady boxed them up.  But just as Mum was about to pay, Luke remembered something.  He’d heard a horrible rumour at school which he hoped wasn’t true but he had to be sure.  He’d heard Katia tell Susan that shoes are made of cow skin!  It was too shocking to contemplate and Luke had assumed Katia, who was always melodramatic, was making it up to get attention.  But could she have been telling the truth?

“What are they made of?” Luke asked the shop lady.

“These are made from quality …..”

“Canvas!” Mum interrupted, “they’re made of the same material your plimsolls are made of but they’re sprayed with a special substance that makes them hard and shiny.” 

Luke was surprised at his Mum for rudely interrupting someone who was already talking.  The times she’d told him off for doing that.  And the shop lady was obviously surprised at her too as she looked at her quite strangely.  But in a way Luke was glad to discover his Mum didn’t always do everything right.  It made her a bit more human.

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continues tomorrow 😀

or you can read the whole story here now 🙂