Mismatched Shoes

Jackson dresses himself for the most part. And actually does a great job for a little tyke. Sometimes we’ll get some funky choices – head-to-toe in pull-ups or his hair covered in bamb-aids. But whatever we just roll with it, mostly he’s styling.

Today we go to leave the house so I can drive him to daycare, like I do every morning, and there he stands in mismatched shoes. It’s not even peculiar to him, he’s always up to mischief but this wasn’t like that, he just looked at his shoes that morning and decided today it would be nice to wear this combination. Who does that? And more importantly who doesn’t? I mean that’s a pretty cool thing to do right?

I’m big into sneakers. It’s a weird thing. I want so many, but at the same time I only wanna wear one pair of sneakers. I don’t wanna be the guy that shows up every time in a different pair of sneakers. Is that weird?

Anyways I guess I’ll save that that wild ride into my inner psyche for another time.

At first I shrugged it off, but the seed was planted and by the end of the day I couldn’t get it out of my head. Is there a movement or a subculture out there that wear mismatched shoes? Past or present. Or even future. The Bohemiams of the New York scene circa the 1960′s? Or the Hip-Hop community emerging from the Bronx in the early 80′s? The Hipsters of today? I’m just trying to think of avant-garde movements with extreme fashion statements. Punks from every era obviously have, but that’s just cos they’re too fuckin broke to buy a matching pair! And the future part I guess is science fiction movies, but none sticks out where I remember them using that as a technique to distinguish a future us.

I remembered I own these Pumas and I realized they sort of are mismatched shoes, even though they came like that each shoe has different colors. How mismatched do we have to go? Is different shoelaces enough (cos that’s definitely been around). It has to maintain a definite sense of style. Obviously it’s been done in the way that Lady Gaga has worn a dress with one pork chop covering her left tittie and a filet mignot covering the other. I mean for us, the real people, the regular folk down here on planet earth.

What are the rules? Can we cross brands? Just how far can we take this thing before all life as we know it stops instantaneously and every molecule in our bodies explode at the speed of light? It’s simple to buy one white pair and one black pair of the same sneaker and switch them up. Especially if they have complimenting accents. I found this article pretty quickly and decided it had all the answers – it’s by a woman (whose gender knows everything about shoes) and it’s on a moms website (who know everything about everything). So no further research was required. Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker often did it on her horrific show that my wife made me watch for god knows how many seasons. But the originator was our good ol’ pal Punky Brewster. Case closed. It’s been done but not overdone. It doesn’t seem to have been mass adopted or exploited yet. And possibly not really by men at all.

Let’s see what I can pull off in about 2 minutes:

Hmmm not bad, I think we’re onto something here, switch over the laces and it could just about work. Hey I did say 2 minutes! Give me an afternoon and I could rustle up some mismatched wonders.

Of course I don’t wanna be know as that weird guy who walks around wearing mismatched shoes.

I’ll always be happy to be his dad though!