Superstars

I was at the mall with the kids getting new shoes for the Boy and I got a pair of Adidas Superstar tennis shoes.

My children were appalled.

"You can't get those shoes," said Claire-Adele said. "Those are for high schoolers."

"SMH," said the Boy, which is texting lingo for shaking my head.

Yeah. About that. First, I have no desire to look like a teenager. Full stop. These shoes are retro. Adidas came out with the Superstar in 1969. I think my dad wore them when I was growing up in the 1970's. If not these, a similar Adidas shoe. Maybe he wore the Stan Smiths, the white shoe with the green tag in the back. People in my generation wore the Superstars before they were retro, when they were just regular shoes. I wore K-Swiss shoes, which are very similar to the Superstar.

Retro means appropriating clothing, music and the like from another generation. Instead of borrowing from another culture, retro is borrowing from another time. Since I was alive when these shoes were popular the first time around, I am allowed to wear them without apology to my hipster teens. I am NOT trying to look like a teenager. Teenagers are trying to look like people my age when we were teenagers. Heck, they are trying to look like my dad when he had kids in his house. These kids today are not only wearing "mom" shoes, they are wearing "grandpa" shoes.