The newest annoyance in children's footwear (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

Well, it's bad enough I have to deal with kids cutting me off and bumping into me with those damn rollerskate sneakers...now Stride Ride is coming out with SuperBall shoes.

So now I gotta try and avoid kids jumping up and down while in the line at the supermarket??

Man, I was at this pizza place and the parents were letting their kids roll around the floor in those roller sneakers. They were doing it right near the kitchen door and the waitresses had to maneuver around the kids so they wouldn't drop their dinners. Of course, the parents didn't do a thing to stop the children I felt so bad for the waitresses because you knew they were annoyed, but were probably afraid of the backlash if they said something to the customers.

Does anyone else feel like this? You have to be on the defense when walking through the stores these days because these kids come whizzing by you and nobody is doing a thing to stop it.

Ok, maybe I'm a bit more angry at this because I have bad back spasms and often I've 'tweaked' my back while trying to avoid being slammed into by one of these kids. Do we really need this???

This the Stride Rite shoe has me concerned that this "non stop playing" trend will never end.

Instead of all of these products, designed to entertain kids while they're at the store with their parents, why don't they invent something so that I can have some peace while I shop??

 

[Bryan X]

Those rollerskate shoes annoy me too. So I like to have a little fun with the kiddies whizzing around. I like to step in front of them at the last second, and make other sudden movements to see how good their reflexes and balance are. You'd be amazed how much they slow down after they smash into a store display

 

[MarkHastings]

LOL - I'd love to see that on film.

 

[Claudia P]

They did, Mark. It's called 'Internet Shopping'.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Somewhere out there, there's something Mark likes. I'm sure of it.

 

[MarkHastings]

I like respect....I'm still trying to find it...Hopefully I will someday.

 

[Paul_Sjordal]

You, sir, are a card-carrying curmudgeon. The skate things look like a heck of a lot of fun, and the superball thing looks like a heck of a lot of fun. I'm jealous of today's kids.

 

[RobertR]

You're making me think of the Twilight Zone episode where a man with a rather misanthropic attitude gains the power to wish things into existence. He decides to wish everyone else away. But that makes him lonely, so he decides he'll only allow copies of himself. This results in all the copies complaining about each other, which forces him to concede that he should have left well enough alone.

 

[MarkHastings]

I'm all for fun and I too would have loved to had these as a child, but my issue is not their use, but WHERE they are used.

Just like a bicycle...I am not about to stop a kid from riding a bike, but I sure as hell will stop them from riding one in a grocery store.

 

[Carl Miller]

There's a town in Kentucky called Chicken Bristle....the town has no children. Snipped from the Lexington Herald:

"Nobody in town knows how the town got its name. Some folks, through time, have insisted it be called Turnersville but you walk up to the Jones front door and ask Eugene where Chicken Bristle is and he says, "Right here."

Dallas McCowan owns up to it, too. He sits on the porch of the house he was born in some 59 years ago. "Hit the floor by the bed and was picked up by my aunt, been spoiling me ever since," he says.

He says he doesn't much like cities. "Neighbors don't know their neighbors," he says.

He can't say who exactly is in charge of Chicken Bristle but guesses, if he has to, that it'd be "Nell Davis, up there (he points west and a little high), we let her think she's the mayor."

Of course, there's also Mrs. Douglas McKinney, who is 101, and there's "a lady at the Methodists," who is 95. Sad to say, the folks of Chicken Bristle buried the last Hun family member last Monday.

Nobody says it out loud but it's a town with no children and an uncertain future."

 

[MarkHastings]

Nah, I don't want problems to go away, I'd rather have them solved. Which is why it seems like I'm always angry at something. I don't think it's fair to turn a blind eye to issues. I see so many people trying to just "deal with it" or just "ignore it" and that's not me.

The thing that kills me is, most people act like this stuff doesn't bother them....UNTIL it affects them

Example: I am willing to bet that if I was with someone in a parking lot and I got pissed at how people don't put their carriages in the carriage bins, they'd think I was just an angry person. But I'm also willing to bet that if they came out of the store and one of those stray carriages had slammed into their car and scratched it all up, they'd be pretty angry too.

You see, I find a little annoyance and see the big picture (i.e. the bad outcome) and I usually want to do something to avoid that bad outcome. Most people don't see the bad outcome and only see the little annoyance, so they think I overreact because I'm making a big deal of a little annoyance.

Take my pizza example: If that waitress blew up at the kids, she would have looked like an ass for yelling at kids who were "just playing". But the way I saw it was, if the waitress was carrying a tray full of hot food and one of those rolling kids slammed into her (which was VERY possible) and the waitress dropped the tray of food - what would happen if someone got hurt? The waitress could have gotten really hurt, the tray of hot food could have burned someones, the glass could have broken and cut someone, etc. - So at THAT point, people probably would have agreed with the waitress for being angry.

Hmmmm, it's so funny how people change their tunes once something does happen. It's amazing that we are viewed differently when we're trying to avoid something from happening.

Ooooo! That reminds me...We had that NASTY ice storm on Valentine's day. It was REALLY bad. It took people hours to go a few exits on the highway. The state said that state employees didn't have to go into work if it wasn't necessary...

Anyways, I was talking to a co-worker and she said that she went out to dinner that night. I was like "Oh man! It was bad out" and she goes "Nah, it wasn't bad, we just went slow" Well, she probably thought it wasn't bad because they didn't get into an accident. I am willing to bet that if they slid off the road and got stuck, they'd think it was "bad" out. The news said there were like 30 accidents an hour!!!

Geez, it kills me how people tend to not see the problem just because something bad hasn't happened. :frowning:

Haven't you ever seen a bad intersection and wished the had put up a stop light. And it wasn't until someone gets killed at the intersection, before they finally DO put one up.

I mean, what about helmet laws? Shouldn't these kids be wearing helmets if they are skating around? I'm surprised I haven't read a news story (like Bryan mentions) where one of these roller kids slams into a store display and then the parents sue the store.

 

[Edwin-S]

Why blame the invention for the failings of the parents? It is the parents responsibility to control their stupid brats. Society is also too blame. We, as a society, have made it almost completely impossible for parents to discipline their brats in the public forum. At one time, if a brat was misbehaving in public and the parent swatted the miscreant, people would just nod and think the delinquent got what he/she deserved. Now, people react like the kid is being murdered right in front of them. Every time someone tries to discipline their misbehaving spawn there is some do-gooder who has the overwhelming need to interfere with how parents control their kids.

 

[Trey Fletcher]

A-1 Sauce.

 

[Claudia P]

Mark, you have WAY too much time on your hands...

Why are you angry at the small things? If a grocery cart scratched my car in a parking lot I'm hardly likely to get 'angry'. It's just a scratch, right? For that matter, it's just a car... Why don't you direct all your pent up anger toward something useful? Do you read the news? Do you have any idea what is going on in the world? How about the following news article - does this move you to (righteous) anger?

http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/24/stor...2400851800.htm

I don't intend to hijack the thread. I don't want a political discussion on the board, nor am I intending this as a personal attack. I'm merely pointing out that you sweat the small stuff day in and day out, Mark. Do you ever sweat the big stuff too?

 

[MarkHastings]

Actually I don't. I sweat the small stuff because that's the reason why we have the big stuff. If you ignore the small stuff, they turn INTO big stuff. -If you allow a child to steal a candy bar, you are laying the groundwork for him to steal bigger/more expensive things when he grows up.

But I guess the reason for that has to do with my job. Whenever a project comes in, I am the last guy to do work on the project, so I inherit everyone elses little issues. If there is a tiny issue, the previous person ignores it, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but when the project goes through 20 peoples hands (before getting to you), that one issue (each) now becomes 20 issues that all get dumped on me.

Trust me, small issues may not seem big to some people, but when you add them up, they certainly do become big.

Just like anything in life: Don't ignore the pin hole in the side of your upground pool, because, while it may not seem like a big deal right now, in the future (when the hole gets bigger), you may wake up to a flood in your back yard.

 

[Jon Martin]

I was going to mention something about those shoes here a while ago.

I had never heard of them, but was driving in traffic a few months ago and all of a sudden, I saw a kid running on the sidewalk, and then start sliding. It freaked me out. I thought they had roller blades on, but then they started walking normally and it looked like they had sneakers on. How were they sliding like that? The traffic was bad and I kept seeing the kid running and walking normally, then all of a sudden sliding.

I asked around later and found out they were the new thing. Now, I'm seeing them a lot more.

They look cool, if I was a kid I'd probably want them. But I thought this was some sort of Candid Camera stunt or something, the first time I saw it.

 

[Dave Hahn]

Mark,

I've got a quote for you. When I worked in an office I had it on the wall.

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

George Bernard Shaw

 

[Greg_S_H]

No, Claudia, that's actually good news to me. But, thanks for violating forum rules.

 

[MarkHastings]

The problem with that statement is that most people are unreasonable.

If the world is being unreasonable, then why should you adapt yourself to them? I'm not trying to get the world to adapt to myself, I'm trying to get the unreasonable people to start acting reasonable.

But I guess it's unreasonable to expect people to act reasonable, so in that sense, yes, I am being unreasonable. Talk about your Catch 22!!

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, I'm with Greg. Since we can't talk "Big" issues like politics and religion, the little stuff is really the only thing we can discuss here. We're not allowed to be vocal about it, so no one has the right to judge me on it.