Story of the Day 12/ 06/ 2011

Our son wrote is to let us know he was going to buy a pair of shoes. We had sent him off to Israel with two pairs, a pair of nice shoes, good enough to wear to synagogue on Shabbat , and a pair of sneakers.
The sneakers were forced upon him, by me. He thought he would be just fine with the one pair, but his evil mother thought that he might actually want to go somewhere and see something, like up to Masada or down to the ocean; and the nice dress shoes might be…wrong.
So, my husband and I were a bit surprised, but we thought that perhaps he wanted a pair of sandals, because while it is winter, and coat weather in Jerusalem, there are still warm beaches. Or perhaps he wanted some shoes appropriate for hiking, as there are several nice areas of Israel where those could be useful.
We didn’t hear anymore about it for a few days.
And then there was a phone call.
Not a phone call. The phone call.
He was upset.
Upset being too mild of a term.
He told me he would cut up his charge card.
He would starve himself, I mean stop buying brownies from the kiosk in the yeshivah, he would…..

“What is wrong?”
“He told me that he had spent about $260 on two pairs of shoes.
“What?!?!?”
This is the kid who doesn’t like to go clothes shopping, and who thinks we are being extravagant because we bought him 3 new white shirts at $10 each, before he left for Israel.
Is he on drugs?
I told him not to cut up the card and that we would talk with him on Sunday.

On Sunday, he called.
This interval had given my husband and me some time to prepare a whole list of questions, and to worry. I mean really worry.
This was obviously a sudden personality change…was it something serious?
Aaron has never even been willing to buy new shoes when the old ones looked like …shit.
My husband and I have this thing we refer to as PR- price resistance. It cuts in before $40, at least with shoes.
Personally, I have broken my $40 ceiling twice. Once, I spent $50 on a pair of shoes that my doctor recommended to help lessen the pain in my right knee. Thankfully, he was right, and the shoes have been worth that excessive amount. The other time was about 3 years ago, when I fell in love with a pair of fringed suede boots at Macy’s. I salivated over them for about 5 weeks. Finally, with a combination of a sale and a coupon I got them for $53.
I then gave them to Larry to give to me for Hanukkah.

My husband, who has similar PR when it comes to footwear, was as worried as I was.
So, with trepidation and a list of questions, we had anxiously awaited Aaron’s Sunday phone call.

“Why did you need new shoes?” was the first thing my husband asked.
And we were both surprised by the answer.

“My shoes didn’t fit. I think my feet grew.”
We can’t argue with that.

“Well, why did you buy such expensive shoes?”
“ I had already been to 4 other shoes stores. None of them carried shoes that were big enough for me. They have European shoes sizes here, 44 and 45, and they didn’t’ go up high enough to fit me; and this was the only store that had the extra large size.”
Aaron added, “And I didn’t know I was supposed to haggle.”

Well, he should have haggled, but the general rule is that you will get between 5 and 10%, sometimes a bit more if you are determined off from doing that, not a huge dent in an already huge bill - at least that si what my friend told me ….and his feet grew, and he was…big before he left
6’ 2”, we think.
And while you can get sandals and flip flops made in Israel, closed shoes are mostly imported and have VAT ( Vale Added Tax), so, all of the sudden the shoes didn’t seem so hideously expensive, considering the size of our little boy’s feet.

And if his feet grew, are growing , the rest of him is probably…

Which led me to ask another important question.
“Aaron, are your pants getting too short?”