Chromosome and Shoes

March 21st, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I’m Korean American. Born in Seoul; apart from the first eight years, raised in California. I married a woman who was born in Louisville, Kentucky to parents representing a broad swath of peoples of Western Europe. Our family is a blending of ethnicities and cultures. On any given evening, you’ll find forks and knives on a set dining table. On the next, you’re likely to see spoons and chopsticks. Our dog lives in the house – lives pretty large, I might add. And we remove our shoes at the door. When we have a good sized group over, the entry looks like a clearance table at a shoe outlet store.

When our second, the oldest of our two girls was about two years old, she began a strange, ritual migration. Whenever the entry was filled with shoes, they – the shoes, ladies shoes specifically, and I swear she knew the difference – would pull her toward them. Without ever being encouraged to do so, she began trying ’em on. She’d put a pair on and drag them around a few steps, put them back, and try on another. After dragging another oversized pair for awhile, she’d go back to the collection, and so on, … You get the picture. Did I mention, she was two! Yeah, I have a picture of her with some woman’s size six shoes, a little purse, and a toy cell phone to her ear. It’s a really scary picture. Yes, she is cute … very cute. So cute that one might miss that the photo is a harbinger of things to come – expensive things.

I don’t get the shoe thing. Not counting my basketball shoes collecting dust in the closet, I own five pairs. It’s the most I’ve owned at one time in my life; I’m kind of embarrassed that I have so many. But I’ve heard it enough to be convinced that the thing for shoes is not made up. Oh, it’s real; I’m a believer. What I did not know was that that thing, the thing for shoes is in the female gene. Somehow it’s tied in with that extra X chromosome. Who knew?

And, yup, she still likes shoes … a lot.

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