These Birks Were Made for Walking

We started our Victoria Day weekend with a roadtrip on Saturday. First, I dragged the family to Philosopher's Wool in Inverhuron and bought another of their wonderful kits. I'll say more about this trip in a future post.

We then drove down the Lake Huron coast to spend the rest of the day with good friends who had invited us to their cottage, just south of Kincardine. After a grey and raining morning, the skies cleared and we had perfect weather for a long walk along the beach.

Here's a photo of Julia on our walk. Notice the shoes she is wearing. These are the ten-year-old Birkenstocks I'd bought in Germany. They're dirty and battered but well-loved. Far from fashionable (or so I thought), I'd been wearing them mostly in the garden the past few years.

A few days ago, Julia spotted the shoes in my closet and asked if she could borrow them. Her claim is that Birks are very much in style these days and all the kids in her school have them (or knock-offs if they can't afford them and their parents don't have extra pairs conveniently lying around).



I then dug out of my closet a pair of three-strap sandals, another pair of Birks even older and uglier than the first. Just a couple of weeks ago, I'd been contemplating tossing these out, thinking that no charity could possibly want them. Well, Julia took these too. According to her, it's fashionable to wear them with sweat socks, especially when the socks are pulled over sweat pants. I wonder if this fashion is limited to her school, as I can't imagine how the general teen population could possibly consider this attractive or comfortable. At least my friends in the university's math department will look stylish now, though I suspect the teens consider it a faux-pas to wear your sandals and socks with a pair of crumpled Dockers.

I am glad my old shoes are getting a second life. However, if I'd known they were so popular these days, I wouldn't have let Julia borrow them. Now I'll have to wait until they're out of style before I'll get a chance to wear them again.