When I was little, no more than 3 or 4 years old, I had a book called New Blue Shoes (I actually still have it and am balancing it in my lap as I type this). In it, a little girl named Rebecca is taken to get a new pair of shoes. She insisted that she get, “new blue, nice blue, nice new blue shoes.” As you might guess, soon after being read this book, I started requesting my own new blue shoes.

Despite that early conditioning, these days my tastes run more to red shoes than blue. I have a number of pairs and those up there are my current rosy footwear infatuation. I got them a few weeks ago at Target. When I moved to put them in the cart, Scott raised an eyebrow at me and asked, “Do you really need those?”

I smiled winningly and said, “It’s not a matter of need exactly.” And so I got my new red shoes.