Every spring, my mom, my sister, and I would go shopping together in order to purchase some flashy, new summer footwear. Except for a brief foray into the world of plastic jelly shoes, my preferred tootsie enclosure for the summer was without question the flip-flop. Only back then we called them "tongs", pronounced like the pinching kitchen gadget, it was actually spelled thongs. At some point, in order to avoid any awkward confusion, everyone moved towards more family friendly terms like flip-flops, flippies, and flippers. Unlike the colorful cheapie ones that you can currently find at places like Old Navy, the old school flip-flop had substance. They were made of two thick black pieces of rubber joined together in the middle by brightly colored stripes. These stripes usually matched the woven strap that kept it on your foot and there was a sort of cross-hatched pattern on the top surface to give you a little bit more traction. The definition of "a little bit" in this case being almost none at all. There was a brief period of breaking in that needed to happen in order to achieve maximum comfort. Once the straps had softened and an impression of your foot had been made, they were the perfect summer footwear, barring a few, teeny, tiny complications.
First of all, this was not an all-terrain shoe. In fact, I almost never wore them on adventures that took place in the heavily forested areas that my family frequented. There was absolutely zero tread on the bottom providing absolutely zero traction. On a grippiness scale of one to ten, with ten being the suction cupped toes on the tootsies of a tree frog and one being a pair of penny loafers on an icy sidewalk, flip flops received a negative six. In fact, the surest way to ruin a flip-flop beyond repair was to attempt to cross a bit of slick, mossy terrain while wearing them. As the bottoms of your feet would come into contact with increasing amounts of moisture, they would start to slip around dangerously until one final ankle-breaking sideways slide blew the sandal completely off your foot. Usually the little rubber piece that held the strap in place had pulled completely through the sole of the flip-flop. This kind of irreparable damage meant the end of your summery slip-on.
If you weren't extremely careful, making your way through wet grass could have the same unfortunate outcome. But even worse than wet grass was tall grass. Inevitably, some vicious, unbreakable stringy plant strands would weedle their way up between your toes. Wading through a piece of heavily weeded woodlands was torture. It was the equivalent of balancing razor blades between your toes, taking a hike, and hoping they didn't cut you to ribbons. When you made it to the other side of a field, you had to stop and check to see that all of your toes were still actually attached to your foot.
Finally, if you are not already aware of this, the flip flop is not a viable water shoe. Those of you that spend most of your time at the local pool or on sandy ocean beaches may underestimate the importance of proper creek footwear. (FYI - the word creek does not rhyme with leak. It is actually pronounced crick just like the word stick.) When swimming in rocky bottomed rivers, correct choice of footwear is essential to your survival. Before the invention and widespread availability of Aqua Sox, Tevas, or what we refer to at our house as the Plastic Prison Clog, people had to improvise their own watershoes. I usually went with an old pair of sneakers but the lengthy drying time and increased weight were considerable drawbacks to this particular option. Therefore, one might think the quick-drying, light-weight flip-flop to be a reliable second choice. Unfortunately, unless you've been hanging by your toes from trees in the off season, the ridiculous amount of toe strength required to keep flip-flops securely on your feet in fast moving water is nearly impossible to sustain for any length of time beyond three minutes. You will find yourself shoeless in a matter of seconds, and unless someone is downstream to catch your fast floating flippers, your day is about to get worse. In the few minutes, it takes you to gingerly make your way to shore, you will end up with banged up bare feet that are bruised and bent beyond all recognition. And by that time your former footwear will have already traveled three towns down river.
If you are still not convinced that forests & flip-flops just don't mix, I am sure that one of my aunts would be happy to offer a personal testimonial. Before she and my uncle were married, she spent the weekend with our family at our little cabin in the wilderness. Being a city girl, she was not familiar with the importance of forest friendly footwear, a detail that my uncle accidentally overlooked in the process of packing. In an effort to conserve suitcase space as they would be making the three hour journey in a Corvette, my aunt attempted to pack light. While the Corvette may have been a cool way to travel, it was not overly roomy. Space was especially limited due to the inclusion of a third passenger, a disgruntled, misplaced Malamute who found herself jammed in the back instead of in her usual shotgun seat. My aunt had selected a single pair of all purpose footwear, a cute little pair of woven leather flip-flop sandals Despite the perils of hiking in huaraches, my uncle chose to go the distance anyway, following an out and back mountainous path for many many miles. On the return route, he ended up carrying my aunt piggyback because her poor little feet were blistered beyond reason. Amazingly, her poor piggies recovered and they still eventually married.
Outside of the wilderness, flippies should have received a green light, but even at our house on flatter ground, the flip-flop was highly controversial footwear. For a number of reasons, my father is not a fan of the flipper. While my mother, my brother, and I prefer barefoot freedom, my sister and father do not. My sister doesn't do bare feet very often, but she does own a lot of sandals. However, my dad's motto is: "Socks...never leave home without 'em, unless the house is on fire and your sock drawer is fully engulfed." Unless his foot is carefully tucked under a comforter or riding a wake in a water-ski, the man is never without socks. In fact, I may have only seen his bare feet five times in my whole life. Therefore, he had zero appreciation for the flip flop.
In fact, his tolerance was even lessened each year by the numerous flip flop tragedies that were guaranteed to occur. You really should not run, ride a bike, or try to engage in any kind of sport while wearing a pair of flippies. As an adult, you have learned this lesson the hard way so many times, that you would never even consider breaking into a jog while sporting a pair of flip-flops. Even croquet is out of the question. And if you should unexpectedly find yourself at the batting cages, hitting a few balls is only for the completely crazy. One foul ball to the big toe is all it takes to put you out of commission for the whole summer. It takes littler kids a while to catch on to the danger of mixing sporty pursuits with summer sandals and unfortunately the learning curve is steep.
My dad is a really laid-back, funny guy. He rarely yells and prefers calm lectures to lashing out. However, the one thing that could make him lose his cool faster than you can say the words flickering flame was a flip flop safety violation. Everyone else in the household who wore flip flops was able to avoid incident except me. Every year, I seemed to meet up with the same fate. In a hurry to race off the deck in search of adventure, I would lose control of my flippie clad feet and nearly knock my teeth out. This would bring out the threats from my dad. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do to avoid certain disaster, besides slow down, but the consequence was always the same. My dad warned that if I fell one more time, he was going to burn my flip flops.
Gasp. He wouldn't. My mom had spent good money on them. Now lest you picture my father sitting around a campfire with a smoking rubber sandal speared on a hot dog roasting stick, allow me to explain. Nor was he maniacally laughing and holding a lighter with a six inch flame to my sandals. In those days, out in the country, depending on where you lived, trash pick up was not a guaranteed part of life. So, people either buried trash in their backyard or invested in something called a burn barrel. This was an empty fifty-five gallon drum with a few holes poked in it, usually balanced on some cement blocks. It's purpose was a safe place where country folk could burn up their trash. Not very classy or environmentally friendly I know, but it gave kids a legitimate excuse to play with matches, so at the time I was all for it. It's not that different from the now defunct process of sending city trash to a local incinerator. The burning process just happened to be a bit more up-close and personal. At least we were reponsible for our own ash clean up, instead of pawning it off on the poor state of New Jersey.
Anyway, life would continue this way with idle threats and a mounting list of ridiculous flip flop related injuries until one day my dad would snap, throw the flip flops in the trash and subsequently burn them. As I watched the thick, black smoke rise from a flaming pool of hot, gooey melting rubber, tears would roll down my cheeks. A combination of sorrow over the shoes and searing pain from my most recent wound attributed to inappropriate footwear. The remainder of my summer would include a steady diet of sneakers and socks for me, but in my heart I found comfort in the fact that there was always next year. Despite my dad's protests, my mom would once again allow me to select a pair of sassy new sandals at the beginning of next summer. And there was always the outside chance that someday my flippies would actually stick around long enough to see the month of July.
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