From "Nice People!" to "Nice Shoes!"

Speaking of shoes...

Remember how It's Sillier by Bike?

Well, Little Oil has narrowed her broad-spectrum pedestrian-complementing significantly. Her previous style consisted of her specifically complimenting strangers on whatever they were wearing or doing, seemingly as a way to make friends with anyone who caught her eye.

Now, she focuses on pedestrians' shoes. What can I say? Shoes are her new thing! She starts by muttering to herself,

"big shoes. heels! nice shoes."

She gets louder as she starts addressing me,

"I like her shoes! I wanna get shoes like that someday. High heels! Papa, he has nice shoes!"

As she begins to address the totally oblivious pedestrians, so begins also the shouting,

"I like your shoes! Hey, hey! I wanna borrow them!

NICE SHOES!"

What's funny is as this shouting grows in intensity she looses her specific targets and just winds up screaming about shoes for a minute or two.

This whole process usually lasts as long as it takes for us to ride from Pike Market to the I-5 overpass on Pine St. After that the density on the sidewalk drops off significantly and our conversations get more free-form.

Heh. Kid's shaping up to be a really friendly femme who enjoys Jane Jacobs' "ballet of the sidewalk" and engaging with strangers about her own obsessions. I can get behind that.

I love Pedal Parenting!