Day 11 of our 31 Letters Literacy Project is about WINDOW SHOPPING.

Have you ever stopped to look at something in a store window?  Has this thing enticed you to purchase it?  Today’s letter topic is WINDOW SHOPPING, inspired by the poem Red Slippers that we bumped into on Day 11 of 365 Days of Literacy for Kids:

RED SLIPPERS by Amy Lowell

Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the
street, flaws of grey,
windy sleet!

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Write a letter today to your special child/children/grandchildren about an experience you remember about looking into a shop-window.  We’ve all looked into a shop-window at one time or another.  What tales have you to tell?

This is my shop-window letter to my grandchildren:

Dear ________________________,

Hi, my little darlings!  I’m jumping to when I was a freshman in college in this letter!

One thing about me that has never changed is that I LOVE shoes.  Shoes are my most fun accessory.  I got my love of shoes from my own Mom.  GrandmaRita always had the most beautiful shoes.  I especially loved her high heels.  She wore high heels when she was dressed up.  I remember trying on her high-heeled shoes and walking around my house and dreaming of the day when I could wear shoes that high and that beautiful.

Now let’s jump to the spring of 1971.  It was around this time of year.  High clog shoes were very much in style that year.  Every shoe-store window seemed to have clogs.  I worked at a clothing store in a local mall during that time, so I passed window after window of shoe-stores every single day.  (Actually, I worked at Warwick Mall back then… I just can’t remember the name of the clothing store.  Maybe I’ll remember it by the end of my letter!)

One pair of clogs in one shoe-store window called out to me each time I passed.  They said, “Sharon… come buy us!”

Oh, how I wanted those clogs.  They were beautiful.  They had a cork-style wedge heel.  Very, very high.  Like 4 inches high.  The tops of the clogs were suede… with a colorful patchwork design.  There were red, green, brown and yellow in those lovely patches.  They were so 1970’s.

I was trying to save money for my college tuition, so I would glance at that shoe-store window and try not to listen to the clogs calling my name!  But one day, I stopped.  I looked.  I went in.  I bought the clogs.

I LOVED them!

I wore the clogs the very first time on my college campus… on a lovely spring day.  My college had a large main area where sidewalks criss-crossed in the center.  On each side and on each end of this main area were several buildings.  This is where students came to sit, read, study, talk, play, eat and people watch.  Students sat on benches, walls, staircases, looked out of windows and relaxed on the grass.

And this is where I came on that fine spring day, strutting in my new high clogs.  Lovely.

Until I tripped on the sidewalk and fell out of those new high clogs.  Not so lovely.  I went flying.  My books and papers and pocketbook went flying.  I landed flat on the sidewalk, with my beautiful clogs behind me.  My hands were scraped and my ankle was twisted but I jumped up faster than fast and grabbed my books and papers and pocketbook and scurried back to get my clogs.  I didn’t even look up to see how many people were looking from the benches, walls, staircases, windows and grass.

I slipped my clogs back on and ducked into the nearest building.

Oh, my clogs.  They were calling, “Sharon, you’d better learn to walk in us!”

And I did.  Carefully!

I think my ego was more bruised that day than my hands and ankle!  But I never regretted spotting those clogs in the shoe-store window and them “calling my name”!

I did learn to walk in those clogs and I never, ever fell again.

Have you ever window-shopped… looking at something from the outside IN?

Love you forever and ever,
Grandma Couto

P.S. I think the name of the clothing store was Lerner’s.

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Write your WINDOW SHOPPING letter today, get it in the mail and delight your special child while giving a great big boost to LITERACY!

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MAIL TIDBIT of the Day:  The London Post Office Railway, known as Mail Rail, had 8 stations in 1927, but by 2003 only three stations remained in use because the sorting offices above the other stations had been relocated.