Kids these days just don’t respect their shoes. I can’t even get my kids to untie their laces when they take their shoes off, and putting them on involves grinding the cuff of a still-tied shoe with the heel until the foot-wear obliges. Even in today’s world of wonder materials, sooner rather than later the shoe wilts. The back of the shoe, whose parts are known in the business as the quarter and the outside counter, become a flattened, sorry mess. Curiously, my kids would never wear shoes that cost a quarter or were bought at an outside counter.
The busted hockey stick can help. If you carve out the flat side of the end of a hockey stick, you can make a shoehorn — the perfect tool to halt the traumatization of footwear in your house.
Shoehorns have a rounded base thin enough to slip out of the shoe once your foot is in. For this reason, I suggest you use a laminated hockey stick, as solid wood might be too brittle. The smoother you get the wood, the better it works. You will need to sand it down, splinter free, to about 1/8” inch thickness. It need not be varnished, but the smoother you sand it, the happier your feet, socks, and shoes will be.
