Lately, my grandson Carter has taken to wearing his shoes backwards. This is not some disability or stubborn mindset by a child who is oppositional.
“Carter, you’ve got your shoes are on the wrong feet,” I point out to him as we were about to leave the house.
“I like them that way, Popeye,” he replied, and that was the end of that conversation.
I have to admire his assertiveness. He is learning early that life is a series of choices. Currently, his feet are the spokesperson for those decisions and growing independence. The backwards shoes are an amusing reminder that he is just a little boy figuring out how his feet work, and that he thinks out of the box like his grandpa Popeye. But when I watch him walk it looks like he’s moving in two different directions at the same time and may split down the middle at any moment. Wouldn’t it be better to have two left feet? In my way of thinking, at least you’d be going somewhere.
Like all funny habits, Carter’s insistence on not having a dominant foot, may put him the unique category of being amphibious, meaning he’ll be equally at home kicking a soccer ball underwater as he is on land. I don’t think there’s many marathons in his future, but he may be very good at several up-and-coming sports still in the developing stages.
Since the Olympics create about five new sports every two years, by the time Carter is twenty, his inclination to walk in two directions at the same time will put him in a prime position for an event I’m calling the “Bi-Shoe-Along.” This sport, which will require little practice and even less concentration, will be an international multi-tasking phenomenon. Competing athletes, knowing what it feels like to have the shoe on the other foot, will exhibit incredible empathy for their fellow athletes, and will, during the event encourage each other to put that best foot forward. These athletes will have their Nikes or New Balance walking shoes custom-made to fit the wrong foot, making the stock value of those companies sore to new heights.
Without getting too technical, the Bi-Shoe-Along will require participants to take two steps forward followed by three steps back continually until, after a hundred steps, they’ll finish in the same spot they started, all the while wearing their shoes on the wrong feet. I have some reservations about the future of this sport, but I think Carter may grows out of his odd shoe habit before the Bi-Shoe-Along catches on.
I recently gave the Bi-Shoe-Along a try, but soon was so confused by walking first one direction and then the other I forgot where I was and had to call for my wife for help. By the time I had gone twenty steps forward and back, the pain in my arches had gone to the next level and my face was twitching uncontrollably like it did when I ate my first Brussel sprout. At the fifty-step mark, my brain was so confused that I began having a Fibonacci flashback to high school math class where I was asked to find the next number in a seemingly random sequence of numbers like 5…362…9,801, and so on until infinity.
As I finish this essay, I sit on the couch next to my grandson watching his favorite character on TV, Blippi, who is on a spiritual walkabout with an Australian child. I notice Carter’s toes are pointed in the right direction, and he seems perfectly happy. I, on the other hand, have an ice pack on both feet and believe I have caused irreparable damage to my arches.