Shoe Island

If anyone is a fan of the children's book "Frederick the Mouse", this one is for you. The Legend of Shoe Island. My folks got divorced when I was pretty young, like 1974. I spent vacations and summers with my dad. He likes getting things for free - clothing, food, cars, boats.... So he found this sailboat, abandoned by the side of Farrington Highway "in really good shape!". We took it home and "fixed" it. Which means we duct-taped some styrofoam to the holes in the bottom, to make it more floatey-like. Every Saturday, we would go out for a boat ride. When we got stuck in the middle of Honolulu Harbor and needed a tow, the Coast Guard was generally there to tow us in. This was after the cut-out jars of "bug juice" failed to heed the water-in-to-water-out desire of the captain. When we did successfully set sail, it sucked. It meant we were going to Shoe Island. This was a crescent sandbar in Honolulu Harbor that collected all the lost slippahs of the world and gave me my "new" shoes for the year. We would anchor at SI and make our way to the beach. After warm mayo, American Cheese and relish sandwiches, we (I) would be given a mask and a paint scraper to clear the barnacles from under the boat by swimming under it. This was NOT fun. I cut my hand every time and likely got PCBs squished into my body. I was like 7. Then, we would walk along the shoreline and try to find matching slippers - a blue women's size 9 with a black men's size 12 that were roughly the same color were considered a "perfect match" and were then cut down to fit my 7 year old feet with some old pinking shears. I had several pairs of these after an outing - new shoes! If we were lucky, we got towed back to the harbor or bailed the thing out as if our lives depended on it (they did). I wound up just being happy barefoot (and still am - socks are weird) because shlepping around in slippers made for adults was even more awkward than I was already. Am already. Like I need help being awkward. As weird and as WTF as these stories are, I love to tell them because they are unflattering. And awkward. And very human. Just like us. I hate Shoe Island, love my dad.