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Schools

No Shoestrings Attached

Why is it that such a simple thing as a pair of shoeless kids enjoying the last days of their summer evokes so many memories?

Isn't it funny, how the smallest things can make you happy?  Today it was feet.  Dirty, skinny, brown feet attached to sinewy legs on a pair of 10 or 11 year old boys.  They streaked by me on their bikes this afternoon, grinning like mad, shouting at each other, one over his shoulder at the other.

I had come to a stop at the bottom of Reliez Station Road where it meets Olympic, on the way to pick up my son from football practice.  The bike trail crosses there.  The boys, whom I mentally dubbed Ben and Jake, paused a fraction of a second to make sure I would let them cross.  Then they pumped their bike pedals furiously with their beautiful appendages.  They were shoeless, shirtless and as gleeful as two dogs on a chase.  Their energy was effortless, bottomless.  They were tanned from months of summer.  One boy had a basket on the front of his bike holding the unwanted shoes and sweaty shirts.  It was a perfect, glorious, joyous moment.  Suddenly I remembered what it was like to feel that way – free and drunk with youth.  It's been a long time since I've seen a barefoot kid riding a bike, a sight as old-fashioned as a tree swing.

The sight of Ben and Jake evokes childhood memories.  A funny thing to have memories of, one's own feet, but tactile memories are very strong. 

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Age six, running across park grass on a scorching day in California's central valley, suddenly realizing the blooming clover was covered with bees.  Stopping.  Turning up my foot to see a fat bumblebee crawling across it; getting stung as I watched.  Dropping to the ground and howling, still in the middle of the buzzing clover, until my mother came and carried me to safety.   I still remember the stinger deposited in the sole of my foot, toxin foaming from it.

At age eight, just after winter breakup in the Matanuska Valley in Alaska.  Melted, warmed ice turned the ground outside our house into pudding-like mud at least twelve inches deep.  My brother and I delightedly tore off our shoes and stomped and rolled through it like happy piglets.  We were so caked it took three bathtubs full of water to get clean.  Boy, was my mother mad. 

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Throughout our childhood, my sister and I using our feet to pick things up from the floor… a discarded sweater, a dropped jump rope, a pencil.  At fifty, my sister still uses her bare feet like a monkey and giggles when I catch her.

Then, memories of my own babies' feet… how I loved them.  Round and fat as puff pastries.  I used to kiss their little pink heels and do a silly rendition of "This Little Piggy." Mine was always "This little piggy went to Paris.  This little piggy went to Rome.  This little piggy went to Bangkok, and this little piggy went to Nome.  And this little piggy went wee wee wee, all the way to Deeeee-troit."  My babies didn't know it was screwy, but they squealed happily anyway when I kissed their toes with each phrase.

I hope Ben and Jake remember the feeling of bare feet on bicycle pedals.  I hope they pick up things with their toes and run barefoot through the grass every single summer of their lives.  I hope they kiss their babies' feet as I did mine.  And I hope, when they are grown, they see a kid's dirty, fast little feet… and it makes them feel... happy.

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