Small Sperrys

Last night I took my Middle Boy shopping for shoes.  He has made the lacrosse team at school and on game days the team has to dress in a shirt and tie for school.  I find it funny that the boy who absolutely hated church clothes as a kid, and the boy who still highly values his comfort, takes great pride in dressing up with his team at school.  It marks him at school as one of those cool kids from the LAX team and he digs it.  It makes me happy too. 

So at the end of the JV games, while cheering on the varsity kids from the stands, all the boys sport their Sperry topsiders (I know right? So eighties-I had some violet colored imitation Sperrys in 10th grade) with socks and gym shorts. So my poor Middle Boy has to wear his Vans (I know again right? Mine were Hawaiian print and they were real!) and he feels all out of it because he has been forced, sadly, to wear his black lace up shoes to school instead of Sperry topsiders.  As you well know, black lace up Sunday shoes with shorts and sport socks just won't do.  I am all for efficiency in the locker room and for bringing fewer shoes to school.  Plus I wanted to reward him for all his hard work making the team this year.  He almost let his fears show him the door causing him to quit in the middle of try out week.  But he didn't.  So even though there is just one game left, (today) I decided to take him to the mall and look for some Sperrys.  Try as we might there was just nothing in his size.  He's at that awkward size between the boys and men's sizes in shoes.  It did NOT help when I suggested he try the women's size shoe that looked exactly like the one he'd been looking at.  How could I possibly think that would be a solution?  When the clerk suggested the same thing and I said "that's what I was just telling him a moment ago." Middle Boy's mood then went from bad to worse.  I may as well have said "why don't we go shopping for pink tutus after this?"  

Middle Boy has always been little.  He's always hated it.  And as we struck out looking for his size in store after store I watched his countenance fall more and more.  He got grouchy with me.  It was like each time we asked if the shoes came in his size and we were told no that the clerk might have been saying in an Arnold Scharzenegger voice "You're small. You're little, why don't you go home and take a nap with your blanket and your binky you little boy?"  Man how I pray that the testosterone will kick in soon with that kid.  It doesn't seem to help that he older brother is towering over everyone these days.  It's like salt in his tiny wounds.

Just last week he was acting glum after a game.  He's had some good playing time this year but this was a game that he'd had zero playing time in.  A close game where they don't put in the second string players.  A game where he had plenty of time to think and look around at all the giants on his team.  He isn't the smallest (but almost).  So here he was at home acting blue and suddenly he went to the drawer, pulled out a pencil and handed it my husband asking to be measured.  We just measured a few weeks ago so it wasn't likely that there would be change this soon.  We all held our breath for the results..... He was actually 1/4 inch bigger! Suddenly his frown was turned upside down.  Now we just have to get online and order him some topsiders and possibly hide the fact that they came from the women's section.