Patent Leather Shoes

“Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up” is a book by John Powers about life for a Catholic Elementary School Kid (if you can find a copy read the book, it’s quite funny). I happened to know the author and a group of us sometimes talked about our Catholic upbringing.

When I was in sixth grade the nuns sent one of the girls home because she was wearing patent leather shoes and the nuns were afraid the boys would be spending their time looking at her shoes in order to see up her dress.

I doubt I was responsible for the title of John’s book because that probably wasn’t an unusual thing to happen to a Catholic school student at that time.

The funny thing, though, is that for a boy to see up a girls skirt if she was wearing patent leather shoes, the boy would have to be almost on top of the shoes and even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to make out much beyond her knees.

Of course I know that’s true because a few weeks after the girl was sent home we tried an experiment. She wore the shoes to a party. The boys were all excited when she said we could try to see up her dress. Only one boy saw anything more than a blur of colors and that was because he got down on his hands and knees as he looked at the shoes, then flopped over on his back and looked up her dress from the floor. He said her undies were blue. She said they were not. Then she kicked him with her patent leather shoes.