Welp, this post didn’t age well: a long time ago, apparently back in 2017, I made a post questioning the existence of Air Jordan shoes, for toddlers. Like, Air Jordans were developed to be Michael Jordan’s signature line of athletic shoes for when he was in the act of playing basketball, but almost instantly they became anything but athletic shoes to anyone other than MJ or any other basketball players who wanted to be like Mike or were also under contract to Nike.
They became status symbols, reasons why people were killed, eventually becoming acceptable as formal wear and/or a stylish option that could be paired with just about anything at all and be met with an approving nod. Eventually J’s would be released for women, and much like it was back in like 1988, Jordans were about as popular as they’ve ever been, if not more than they were when they burst onto the scene.
And then I saw a kid that could barely walk, rocking some MJ 12s, and was like wtf, why does a toddler need J’s???
But this was six years ago, and now I have a three-year old enrolled in a hip-hop dance class for the next season of her dance school’s year. No tap shoes or ballet shoes for this class, it’s about sneakers. Now I’m probably a little bit more of a sneakerhead than mythical wife is, but she knows that J’s are still the cream of the crop when it comes to stylish sneakers, so naturally she trolls the shit out of my by deliberately steering my daughter into wanting some J’s of her own.
And as much as I didn’t want to plunk down the $60 for a pair of shoes that most likely won’t even be able to fit her by the end of the dance year, the idea of my own kid rocking her own J’s wasn’t entirely undesirable. Naturally, when Nike opened their Disney vault and basically made every iteration of Air Jordans available and customizable to the Nth degree, the 9-year old in me that loved MJ 1’s got my own pair, and in spite of the price tag, I like the idea of my kid having a pair of her own 1’s, regardless of how absurd it is that there are J’s for toddlers in the first place.
So here we have it, it took some steering from the wife, but the seed was planted in #1’s head, and she picked out the MJ 1’s out of several options that she also picked, and through process of elimination, naturally landed on the J’s as her pick for hip-hop class.
$60 poorer, but at least I’ll have pride of having some matching kicks with my kid, doubly when she outgrows them, and bequeaths them to #2 to where they’ll get a second life. And if I can take care of them well enough, maybe I’ll sit on them to where I can flip them on like StockX in the future for its original investment in like 15 years.
