God's Shoes

My 10-year-old had some friends come over last night as we all stayed close during a severe rain storm that blew over trees and downed power lines. We sat in our living room, talking with each other when my wife noticed the Friend had shoes that have separate compartments for each toe. One brand name of such footwear is Five Fingers, as there are five little places for your toes to fit individually. My wife got a little excited when she saw Friend was wearing these.
"Do you like those shoes?"
"Yeah, they're great," responded the 12-year-old Friend. "They actually help you run faster and jump higher."
"Really," my wife has genuine interest in her voice. "How do they do that?"
"Because God created our feet to work best without shoes. That's why we were born without shoes, because he created our feet to work best without them. He never thought of shoes in the way that we've made them."
He stopped.
I'm not sure why he stopped.
Friend has a mild stutter, and maybe he was trying to catch his words before they got away from him.
Or maybe he was realizing that he had no fucking clue what he was talking about.
Whatever the case, he stopped. And there was enough of a pause in the conversation for me to lightly insert myself in my lovingly comical yet undeniably truthful way. A way that allows you to see that you're completely and totally full of shit, while still being able to laugh at just how full of shit you are. At times, it's my mutant power.
"So God was baffled by shoes?" I asked. The room gave a light titter of laughter. I pushed, as Friend was smiling at that comment. I stepped into the impersonation of a baffled God. "'Oh, no! They've created shoes! I don't know what to do!'" Friend gave an obligatory laugh while the rest of the room smiled at my simplification of the Bullshit Friend was trying to pass as Truth.
"No, he wasn't baffled. But because Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, that's why we know about shoes. God never intended for us to know about that stuff, and if Eve hadn't eaten that apple, we wouldn't need to know about it. So that's why that happened."
I let him off the hook, as the point of his story was not to defend the willful ignorance of the people he was parroting. The point of the story was to tell my wife about the shoes that help you run faster and jump higher. Because they're made like God made our feet... with toes.

And that's why they are God's Favorite Shoe (soon to be a marketing tool for the brand).