Oh. My. God. How could this happen? It appears that my son has been to school with his feet hanging out of his shoes! It was 7pm when I reached for Josh’s shoes thinking that 4 days into the new term they’d probably need another clean. This is what I found:

Josh’s response to my cries of “Why didn’t you tell me?” was “I didn’t notice.” What?? How could you not notice? How could you not feel the wind between your toes? Surely you could feel that something wasn’t quite right? Apparently not!

So it’s a Thursday night, it’s a school day tomorrow and my boy is off on a winter camp with his Scouts pack tomorrow afternoon for the whole weekend. There is no scope for school shoe shopping. So we have no choice but to plan a mad dash to Merry Hill where, thankfully, shops are open till 9pm. I’d be lying if this thought filled me with glee. I am about to settle down with a glass of wine and watch some trashy telly to celebrate the start of my weekend. But instead I have to face a 40 mile round trip with the worlds worst shopper in tow. Joy.

By 8pm we are in Clarks and waiting for feet to be measured. I look down and see this:

Odd socks???? One black, one grey. Great. I’m so glad I spend so much time pairing all your clean socks, Josh. That’s worth it. And the beautiful, young, child-free assistant laughs politely but is clearly wondering why I let my nearly 11 year old son dress himself. And then another thought hits me – are they even clean???? Please god let them be clean. Please don’t let them be yesterday’s cast offs because the beautiful, young, child-free assistant has her nose inches away from his feet.

I’m also hoping she isn’t looking at the state of his school trousers. Every day he leaves the house in clean uniform and everyday he comes home like this:

Muddy knees (at best), holes (fairly often), school jumper screwed up in the bottom of his school bag nestled alongside half a dozen half drunk bottles of water, and no coat. Again. If I manage to persuade him to take it in the first place (Josh it’s -5C outside and Hurricane Harry is out to play, surely today you need a coat?) then there’s about a 20% chance it makes it back home again that afternoon. So the school bell goes at the end of the day, it’s throwing it down outside and it never crosses his mind that maybe the coat hanging on his peg would be useful. Don’t get it!

I think it’s a boy thing. There’s such a lot that I just don’t get. But he doesn’t understand my pink ways either – “Mom, why does it matter if I wear odd socks? At least they’re clean!”  He has a point. And I’m happy to have confirmation that they aren’t stinky.

So, this time, we will bridge that blue/pink divide by adopting his dad’s solution to the mismatched feet issue. I will replace the contents of his sock drawer with a dozen pairs of identical plain black socks. That way he doesn’t have to spend valuable seconds considering which socks to wear, and I never have to face odd socks. Result.