Except for the wind, I have always looked forward to spring in Flagstaff: the daffodils, the Tevas, the impromptu tea-turning-into-cocktail parties in the back yard. As my children have gotten older, however, and as their extracurricular activities have diversified and increased, spring has become for me not so much the season of renewal as the season of “re-shoe-al”; it seems that every year we end up buying an Imelda-sized load of shoes just to see us through all of our new activities. There are the soccer shoes. The riding boots. The water socks. Shoes for school and shoes for the creek. Shoes for the recital and shoes for hiking. And, as sure as every new box of shoes contains a delicious looking little package labeled “Do Not Eat” (which someone will immediately try to eat), the advent of all these new shoes brings the true harbinger of spring himself: the shoe thief.
The shoe thief is that nefarious ne’er-do-well who sneaks into honest folks’ homes at night and steals their children’s shoes; you’ll know when he has ventured into your neighborhood because that’s when your children’s shoes will begin to disappear. And when I say disappear, I mean that in the most literal sense; it’s as if, during some point in the night, their shoes were sprinkled with some kind of magic powder that causes them to instantly vanish from sight–a child’s sight, that is.
That is the worst aspect of the shoe thief: not only does he manage to steal your children shoes from right under their noses (there’s a visual for you), he also manages to always steal them in the five minutes immediately preceding whatever activity those shoes were needed for; sometimes even in those few seconds it takes for you to say “Hurry up, everybody; we’re late.” What’s even worse is that, in the midst all this confusion generated by the various accusations and indignant denials, the shoe thief will then put those same shoes back as if nothing had ever happened; in fact, nine times out of ten he will put them back in the very place your children have already looked, including: pushed under the bed, dangling off of the swing set and on the neighbor’s porch. Yes, they looked there, and no, they’re sure they weren’t there before. Why? Because they looked there; they looked everywhere. Just now. During the commercial. Not that commercial, the other one. Yes. Everywhere.
When you think about it, that’s really quite impressive: everywhere is a lot of ground to cover, especially during a thirty second commercial break. But, then again, who am I to be so suspicious and doubtful? For all I know they are using some sort of super secret astral travel device that allows them to search other dimensions and universes in the blink of an eye. Still, even with the benefit of astral travel it would be quite impressive for them to manage a search of absolutely everywhere in the aforementioned thirty seconds, especially since, from my perspective, it appears as if they are really only searching three places: the TV screen; the air directly between their eyeballs and the TV screen; and perhaps (although I’m not sure) a spot somewhere just behind the TV screen.
The funny thing about everywhere is that it somehow never manages to contain the one spot where the item is actually located, like the bathroom floor. This is true for every item that my children have ever looked everywhere for; in fact, there are so many different items that seem to fall outside the purview of everywhere (homework, violins, glasses, other people’s car keys) that I’d be a little surprised if anything at all ever was found anywhere in everywhere. Although, to be fair I must point out that perhaps everywhere is already so full up with items missing from other peoples’ searches of everywhere (like Osama bin Laden, O.J’s “real killers” and G.W.’s WMDs) that, conceivably, not one thing more will fit in there, least of all an enormous pile of my children’s stolen shoes.