My kingdom for a boot

Or actually a pair of boots.

It’s silly, I know – wanting to buy a pair of boots in the middle of the winter. I must be insane. The retail machine tells me so, but I have a hard time accepting that I can’t get a decent pair of boots in late February in the North east.

Here’s the dilemma. My son needed a pair of winter boots because the pair we had sequestered in his room back in the fall mysteriously disappeared. Well, one boot did. We assume it was thrown out. He claims they didn’t even fit him, but they did when he tried them on. Details, details. The long and the short of it was that with massive amounts of snow and slush on the ground, the kid needed some decent boots.

So Friday night, after the storming stopped, we went out in search of a good pair. I figured while I was at it, I’d pick myself up a new pair too, just because mine aren’t all that comfortable and I’ve had to wear them an awful lot lately.

Both the show store [Payless] and the department store [Wal*Mart] were not on board with this idea. You see, it’s time for sandals and shorts in retail land. No one is buying boots in February. That’s just nuts. It’s time to prepare for summer vacation. Apparently, if you want boots, you had to do your shopping well before Christmas. [I don’t mean December either, I mean retail-Christmas which now begins shortly before Halloween.] We were out of luck in the snow boot department.

We ended up solving the problem by going with a relatively expensive pair of all-weather work boots which are both water and oil resistant. Hopefully he won’t be in a situation where his footwear has to repel large amounts of oil, but if he is, he’s ready.

I now understand why so many stores are going out of business and the country is still in the grips of a recession. It’s because the stores insist on selling people things they don’t need when they don’t need them. Who’s buying shorts and sandals in February? Anybody? It’s sad to think of all those retail execs sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out why they’re not making any profit on bathing suits and lawn chairs between New Years and Easter. Maybe if they worked a little harder on inducing global warming, they’d capture the summer attire market in the middle of winter. One can only hope they figure it out soon.

In the mean time, I could still use a new pair of boots. I guess I’ll have to mark my calendar start looking for boots in September.