May 23, 2006 | Family & Life

When your child reaches maturity, you discover and rediscover certain things about their personalities you may not want to know. JGirl and I haven’t had a serious conversation about sex – yet. We had the basic talk about sex, where babies came from, how to avoid infections, what to look for in a boyfriend. The typical mother – daughter conversation that could end up in an argument. Not yet, so, so far, so good.

But what I didn’t know is JGirl loves shoes. Before she gets angry with me for discussing this, and we’ve got four more days to go. Let me say this: she has great taste in shoes, and she hits the sales rack first, finding hot looking shoes at fifty percent or more in discount price. I’m trying to remember if I had a shoe thing. Yes, I did. And we’re talking Joan and Davids’, Ann Klein, Ann Taylor and the higher the heel the better. So, I understand. However, our spare room looks like a shoe store. I’m wondering if I could, perhaps sell a few pair? Naw, she’d yell at me and then make me buy her new ones. I could try to wear hers, but we don’t wear the same size.

What are shoes? Why do women have a love affair with them? Why do stores have larger, brighter shoe departments for women, than for men? At JGirls’ graduation, an Honorary Doctorate was presented to Cloris Leachman, the actress. The woman is from Iowa and is eighty years old. Last movie I saw her in was Scary Movie 4. We won’t dwell on her acting in the movie, but damned if she wasn’t wearing the hottest pair of four inch pale peach shoes! She wasn’t tottering, she strutted down the aisle with no assistance! Cloris, you go Girlfriend!

Then I understood, JGirls’ affection as well as every other women’s love of shoes. No matter what outfit you’re wearing, it can be jeans, capris, an old suit, whatever. A hot pair of shoes dresses it up, makes us look good and we can find a pair at any price. Even Payless has great looking shoes. Just ask Star Jones, of course, she’s no longer a spokesperson for them. We may not be able to afford Manolos’, but we can find shoes to make us feel like we’ve spent five hundred dollars for a pair.

When walking down the street, check yourself when you look at other women. What do you look at first, second and third? Somewhere in the top three are the shoes. Men don’t check out other men’s shoes. But they will check out women’s feet. And since it’s almost summer, in order to wear sandals or any open toed shoe, a pedicure is required. Of course, suffering a pedicure with parrafin wax and oils is a real drag, but we don’t want our shoes to suffer with ugly feet.