Crocs Get the Boot
Manolo says, sensible peoples in positions of authority are stepping forward to protect the innocent.
Crocs, those ubiquitous, Swiss-cheese-like clogs, are joining their flimsier flip-flop cousins on school “do not wear” lists around the USA.
More public schools are instituting stricter, parochial-style dress codes, and Crocs, along with generic sandals and flip-flops, aren’t fitting the closed-toe, closed-heel criteria. […]
In some elementary schools, Crocs are a safety question. Though most schools are escalator-free — in the past year, the Croc-escalator cocktail has been blamed for injuring the toes of a few children — administrators say monkey bars and Crocs, as well as sandals and flip-flops, don’t mix.
It’s not “totally unreasonable” for schools to be sensitive that some clothing poses safety concerns, says Lisa Soronen, senior staff attorney with the National School Boards Association. “Schools are sued not infrequently for a variety of injuries that happen to students” on school property. “I’ve tried on Crocs. They’re not made for your individual foot. These aren’t custom shoes here.”
Ha! The Manolo laughs at the obvious!
October 18th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I heard the very troubling commercial on my local Christian radio station just the other day - a worthy organization is sending “rubber clogs” to the refugee children in Africa for only $3/pair. (”Yes, the same rubber clogs you and I pay $30 for in the stores!”) It is good that their feets will be covered and out of the sewage and garbage, but covered in Crocs? Is that entirely necessary??? I am torn - I wish to help the children but cannot (CANNOT!) give money to the Crocs.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I was with the schools until the last line of the quote. Is Ms. Soronen really expecting kids at public schools to be wearing custom shoes? What planet is she from?
October 18th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Carol, I, too, am troubled at the idea of inflicting bad fashion on the 3rd world, but I think (based on my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America) that the mothers of these children would be happy to have any sort of foot covering. The money they don’t have to spend on shoes is money that can go for pencils for school.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I was a first-aid attendant in a large department store for some time, and twice I have seen the toes of a flip-flopped foot get sliced up by an escalator. If the blood and bone aren’t enough to make you turn away, the flip flops surely are.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Ah…yes…the parochial-style dress code. Amazing how all the things that were simply horrifying as a child turn out to be really good ideas as an adult, hmm.
October 21st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
If at all possible, put the feet of a child in a leather shoe. In both cournty and city environments a child will walk in the nastiest most unsafe area it can find. Leathear breathes, is abrasion resistant, (See leather clad racing motocyclist skidding down the track in his leathers then getting up with his own hide intact)
Also the smooth leather shoe is much less likely to snag on things. It is just more “agile” on those little annoy8ng bundles of hyperness.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:43 am
I have finally found someone (other than a small child born of Hollywood superstar parents) who has a good reason to wear crocs. Dina Rabinovitch has breast cancer and in her post on 26 September 2006 on her blog, she wrote:
“My crocs are cancer-related. The reason I wear them is because one of the - so far, undocumented - side effects of herceptin is that it shreds your nails, and I am repeatedly having to have (look away now, non cancer-sufferers) whole toe-nails removed, wear huge bandages, and consequently…crocs”.
http://takeoffyourrunningshoes.typepad.com/take_off_your_running_sho/2006/09/never_trust_a_b.html
Ms Rabinovitch has a Just Giving link on her blog because she writes it (and her columns for The Guardian (the latest one - on being terminally ill and the mother of young children - is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2196348,00.html)) to raise money for “CTRT Appeal, a million pound [charitable] appeal to set up a cancer trials research centre at Mount Vernon Hospital in London”, where she receives treatment.
The reason she gave for writing her columns, and not just concentrating on her kids, was excellent:
“I wanted the columns to run op-ed, that is, facing the editorials page, giving the subject a serious weight. One in seven women gets breast cancer now, a lot of mastectomies. If one in seven men were losing their penises you can bet that’d be front-page column material, I said”.
For that, she gets my money.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:49 am
I am sorry to report that Ms Rabinovitch died last night. She was 44. My deepest condolences to her husband, children, family and friends. Linda Grant has a post about this on her blog.