I’m starting to think I need a pair of these things now that I know that they come in adult sizes.
I’m pushing 40, though, and I’ve never been what you might call coordinated. I’d probably fall on my ass.
If it don’t teach him, I get to do it again!
Surely the complementary shapes of one’s elbow and a child’s eye socket are no coincidence?
I don’t spend enough time around children to get annoyed by the few I run across, but I can see where a bunch of them on skate-shoes could get really annoying. Feel free to liberally apply the elbow where required.
WhyNot’s thirteen year old may be the coolest kid on the block for not mindlessly following the trend.
It’s only things like this that make me annoyed at being over 30. I wonder if I could get away with wearing a pair of those without getting strange looks.
I’ve seen kids wearing those and scooting around in short bursts in malls and on sidewalks here. Then in the next moment, they are polite, stationary fellow pedestrians. Surely I’ve been lucky in not having run into the rude pushy ones. Elbows at the ready all the same!
How do they work? Are the wheels on springs or something? I’d like someone to explain the mechanism that can turn an ordinary running shoe into a skate-shoe.
Yes, they make them in adult sizes, but they are not cheap. My wife has MS and has difficulty walking, and stumbles and trips frequently. I had seen these shoes in the last couple years and recently her walking had become worse so I decided to get a pair for her to use. The kids we see are using this effortlessly and glide around so easily that I figured it would be easy to drag her around.
They are not easy to wear. The wheel is incorporated into the heel of the sole and protrudes from the heel by about a quarter inch. To walk normally, you need to put your weight on the toes and midsole. If you walk onto your heel, your foot goes skidding out from under you. You can take the wheel out of the shoe to use it as a proper shoe as well.
To use them is also difficult and needs practice and muscles. Your feet have to be in front of one another and you have to hold your toes off the ground so you roll on the wheel in the heel. First you need coordination. If you master this, then you need strength in your shins to keep your toes in mid air while you are balancing on the heel.
We have not successfully used them yet. She feels uncoordinated and is afraid of falling. I am willing to wear them around (luckily our feet are almost the same size) but haven’t practiced enough to wear them out somewhere. Well, that and my 5 year old kids yelling at me that they want to do it too!
I wonder what looks I will get as a 40-year old rolling by on these things.
I have a pair of sneaker with retracting roller skates. The four wheels are small, hard, and not very suited to rolling. I want a pair of Heelies (the shoes with one large removable wheel). They fall into the category of fun things I’d do if I wasn’t broke.
I was envisioning some sort of heel clicker thingy, whereby I would click my heels and the wheels would pop out, then click them again and suddenly I’m walking again! This problem of the wheels always protruding, however, would be a bit cumbersome. I can dream, though.
Click, zoom! Awesome.
My wife has MS too, cantara, and I can fully understand your frustration and desire to find some way to help and make her life easier. It’s a hard thing to have to watch, and there’s nothing I hate worse than feeling this helpless.
Thanks for the warning, but I don’t think I would have considered putting my wife on skates in any case.
The shoes are Heelys. My daughter (age 9) has a pair - actually her second pair - she outgrew the first which she got maybe 3 years ago. They take WEEKS of practice to learn to use with any skill. To balance you need to stand with your feet in line not apart (ie one foot in front of the other, NOT parallel) so you look like an Egyptian mural, and with the toes lifted off the ground - put your toes down and they act as brakes. Frankly, I fall over just thinking about standing like that.
And what’s with the anti-child vibe? How about leaving the name calling aside? Not everyone thinks their child is faultless, but by starting with the “Precious” bit in advance, you forestall reasonable discussion.
It’s now been well over two weeks ago… Zombie kids shoes.
Closing this as it’s a zombie.