I’ll admit it - I was still half asleep when I saw this this morning, so I may have dreamed it.
I went into the cafeteria to get an egg sandwich and a large coffee to alleviate the “half-asleep” thing, and there was a little girl who appeared to roller skating around while she and her (presumably) mother waited for their breakfast order. She glided up next to me at the counter and I happened to look down and notice that she was wearing… well, hell, those looked like regular ordinary sneakers.
I thought about turning her upside down and examining the bottoms of her feet, but I figured her Mom might take that the wrong way. I suppose I could have just asked, but you know - half asleep, so that course of action didn’t suggest itself to me until they had already left. It looked like there were probably some wheels or something embedded only in the heels, so she could still walk normally if she wanted to. Pretty cool, actually.
How do these things work? Is this something new, or have they been around forever and I’m just hopelessly out of touch.
Those sound so fun! I never really got comfortable with skates (roller or in-line) because I never learned how to stop well (as opposed to a skate board, where if I couldn’t stop it, at least I could hop off!) These, at least the one-wheel type, seem safer to me, since I can put my toe down to stop. I may have to invest in a pair…
I’ve never heard of them either, Exgineer, and I have a 13 year old son!
The concept, if not the brand, has been around a lot longer than that. I remember shoes with retractable wheels being around when I was a kid (circa 1978 or so).
Obnoxious? I just don’t see that. I’m 25 and everytime I see them I think, “if only I had a pair of those…” while I slip into daydreams of me and my cool rollershoes.
Me too audiobottle, only I’m 30! Do they make these in adult sizes? Can I wear them in the office? Can I hold my sweetheart’s hand and make him tow me around at the Farmer’s Market? I’ve only noticed these shoes in the last 6 months or so and I’ve been very jealous of the kids I’ve seen with them.
I…hate those shoes. Not necessarily because of the shoes, but because the parents whose children have them don’t have the native intelligence to teach their kids when it is appropriate to use the wheels, and when you should walk around.
I used to work truck crew at the local Wal-Mart. In this job I would routinely be pulling pallets full of stock out to the sales floor; past 9 p.m., incidentally, so we never really thought we’d have a problem with a bunch of ten-year-olds being idiots.
We were wrong.
I cannot count the times these moronic kids would dash in front of me while I was pulling a thousand pound pallet full of dog food and force me to hurt myself to stop from hurting them. And when I would snap at them that they can’t use those in the store (it is a policy at the Wal-Mart I was at, but the sales people didn’t enforce it), of course the parents would get TOTALLY upset at me for correcting Precious, despite the fact that because their kids are morons, I just sprained my wrist.
Unless we can start breeding smarter kids and parents, this shoe is a Bad Idea.
Precisely. This is why it’s obnoxious. A few weekends ago I found myself, unfortunately, in a Toys R’ Us on a Sunday afternoon. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to jump to avoid a collision with a boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, in skate shoes. Kids can’t stay out of people’s way when they’re walking, let alone moving faster than that. It was a real hazard - he almost got a very sharp elbow in the eye at least once. Although that would have taught him.
They’re obnoxious and dangerous, but totally cool and I would have been begging for a pair when I was 10. The first time Mr. K and I saw a kid wearing them, we stopped him and asked him what they were and made him roll around for us. He was the coolest kid evah.
I saw some just last week in adult women’s sizes, so I know adult sizes are out there… I almost bought a pair too, but I settled for some Vans instead of Heely’s
Helena: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Valentine: Absolutely. If we put little wheels in the bottoms of our shoes, we could just roll around everywhere…
–Mirrormask, 2005
They’re called (I think) wheelies, and kids bring them into our store and I can’t stop them for rollerblading because they’re not, technically, rollerblades, and I want a pair. Badly.
