Monday is the day the week starts back up, and Sammy has to wake up hellishly early so I can drive him several cities away to school.

He is not a morning person. Especially on Monday.

After a brisk sternal rub with no results, I awkwardly try to drag him out of bed to a standing position. This might be why my shoulder hurts all the time……

So at least he’s standing, and then it’s the painful process of getting him through all the little morning hurdles like peeing. brushing his teeth. getting dressed. Any of these can take him a good 20 minutes, as he will just stand there like a zombie until I repeatedly prod him into action. Sometimes his face crumples, about to cry…. but so far I’ve been able to stave it off with threats of losing the kindle.

He perks up finally, right before we leave.

I drop him off, zoom off to work, and I am back to pick him up.

Remember. Mondays suck.

He has a pained look on his face when he gets in the car.

Starts to tell me how this boy has these amazing shoes that are faster than HIS shoes, and now this boy is faster than him and Sammy NEEDS these shoes.

He knows this because the boy told him this, so without a doubt the kid must be faster and Sammy’s heart is broken.

I tried to reason with him, which was a really stupid idea anyway.

“Did you see him run? Did you guys actually have a race? Have you EVER seen him run??”

No.

But he SAID his shoes could go “100 speed”. So obviously that’s faster than Sammy’s shoes.

And the crying started.

He cried all the way home. I felt bad because part of me was laughing about how ridiculous this was. I also felt really annoyed and didn’t want to really deal with this right now, having had the worst sinus headache for 2 days and the crying wasn’t helping.

And here I am still trying to reason with him. Telling him shoes don’t make you fast, it’s your body that makes you fast… and this boy and Sammy could wear any shoes and race and it wouldn’t matter what shoes they had on. And of course trying to feed his ego and tell him that kid was probably just trying to make you think he was faster because he KNOWS your faster, and he’s probably just jealous.

Crying. Garbled bits of yelling about how he KNOWS that boy is faster…. it’s all about the shoes mom!!! Crying without any sign of stopping, varying degrees of shrill and loud. My head is pounding. Good lord, I can’t find my compassion.

This is happening because it’s Monday.

Finally, Finally… we cut to the chase.

“Sammy, I’m not going to buy you shoes because some boy has them and you think they’ll make you faster than him. BUT… if you really liked how they looked, and want a pair like them I will try to find them. Just so you know they aren’t magic or anything.”

So I get the description. They are grey. And blue. And they must be skechers. I ask how he knows they are skechers… because they are cool, and all cool shoes are skechers. Right.

And we get on Amazon at home, to just take a look. And he picks out these:

I am pretty sure these are not the same shoes. But I think they probably go like, 200 speed.