Cursed Tongue: Gone to Heel

Posted by CursedTongue on November 5, 2006

Just because something can be bought in the toy aisle doesn’t mean that it’s safe. Of the thousands of toys one finds in the aisles at the local superstore, the occasional Mainway Bag O’ Broken Glass, Ecstasy Escape Barbie, or My First Meth Lab slips through the filter of good sense and lands on the shelf for consumers.

W.A.T.C.H., or World Against Toys Causing Harm, complies an annual list of the top 10 toys they believe are dangerous for children. Heelys, “the shoe with the removable wheel,” is public enemy number one this year, according to W.A.T.C.H. These shoes have the distinction of being both a hazard and a public nuisance.

You may have noticed that in the last five years, the phrase “Hell on wheels” has taken on a literal interpretation. Now the screaming, whining, ankle-biting, germ-spreaders in the Wal-Mart are rolling down the aisles instead of simply running. Now children are taller, stronger and faster, and more of a menace to my husband’s sanity than ever. He hates when parents let their kids run wild in public. And he hates when parents let their kids run wild with Heelys on more than sitting through three consecutive showings of The Horse Whisperer.

A toy that only the American affinity for laziness could engineer, Heelys appear to be regular sneakers, and allow kids to zip past other pedestrians as their guardians rifle through bargain bins or ponder whether they should go with the blue or the taupe. I was going to add “and reading labels,” but obviously that’s something these parents are not very good at.

A pair of Heelys comes with more warnings than a nuclear warhead. One of which is an ominous yellow sticker attached to the shoe. Removal of the sticker forfeits the rights of the wearer to sue the Manufacturer of Heelys. There’s nothing that says safety like being asked to give up your legal rights before you use a product.

The Heelys Web site warns, “We always recommend that anyone who attempts to use HEELYS in any capacity should ALWAYS wear full protective gear, including: helmets, wrist, elbow, and knee pads.” The company even offers its own line of protective gear, but of all of the children I’ve seen sporting Heelys, not one of them was wearing so much as a potholder kneepad.

Another warning that comes with the shoes reads, “There is no way to heel and/or grind without running the risk of SERIOUS BODILY HARM, including head injury, spinal injury, or even death.” I would consider death to be SERIOUS BODILY HARM. Now you may think that I’m being alarmist. How dangerous could shoes with wheels possibly be?

Kids have been skating and skateboarding and biking for decades. When kids are skating, they are more likely to be wearing protective gear. They are more likely to be outdoors, in the open, on cement (which offers far more traction than the freshly polished tile floor of the mall). The daunting number of children on Heelys, and their common use in crowded spaces, raises the risk of injury, not only to the wearer, but also to innocent bystanders and displays of Crest White Strips that choke the aisles of Wal-Mart.

I think it would be difficult to find a child in the U.S. who isn’t wearing Heelys. If Al’Qaeda made plans to set up shop in Texas to take out America’s children one at a time they might be making roller-skate sneakers. This insidious form of footwear appears to be a pair of normal sneakers, but it’s possible they are a systematic assault on our nation’s most precious asset, illegal immigrants … ahem … I mean, children.

The popularity of Heelys, and the lack of high-profile Heely-related injuries make it unlikely that they will disappear. Our only hope is that someone from the White House reads this and decides that Heelys are a risk to national security. Then maybe they can remove the Heely CEO from power, and occupy the plant indefinitely until the employees are taught to manufacture shoes without wheels and learn to govern themselves.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: humor, toys

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