flipping and flopping.

i bought flip flops today. two pair, ringing in at just under eight dollars in total. they are silver and green and a startling reminder that i haven't owned a pair of flip flops since i was in the single digits.

how have i managed to avoid them so assiduously for so long?

'tis absurd, really.

i say so often that i am a simple creature, with simple pleasures, and this is only one more example adding to the pile of evidence. simple and nostalgic, it would seem.

flip flops are the uniform of my childhood vacations, before i'd forgiven my father and when i first exhibited the good sense to recognize my sister as one of the coolest women in the world. we would vacation at the jersey shore with some of my mother's closest friends; ice cream at the skipper dipper, 'punk parties' in the back yard (what better use are you going to find for pink hair gel when you're seven?); outdoor showers and silver queen corn; bulldogs and asphalt tiles, the smell of the jersey shore and the peculiar dampness of the sheets in the house.

given that that's what i associate them with, i can't for the life of me pinpoint why it is that i stopped wearing them. because even now, as a woman who really doesn't like the beach all that much (i am a fair-skinned pisces who doesn't like water; i'm a traitor to my kind), i look back on that time with happiness, with a rosy glow.

perhaps this means i've finally learned to appreciate my past without being angry at it. or maybe it's just too fucking hot to wear real shoes. you be the judge. my flip flops and i will be sitting over here, craving peppermint ice cream, whenever you're ready.