The list is frequently shifting/updating but I think number 3 on my list of pet peeves are those stupid shoes that have little wheels in them that I see kids wearing all the time. These tourist kids (for the most part) tear around this city on there little wheeled shoes and it drives me crazy. I don’t know why, I’ve never been hit by one, but they irritate me greatly.
One thing I’ve wondered though is how all these kids with there wheeled shoes don’t end up killing themselves. As far as I can see they dont have any breaks or anything. Also what stops you from walking and then accidentally rolling without intending to? These shoes are deathtraps, an accident waiting to happen. As usual my suspicions are spot on as apparently these repulsive forms of footwear are sending their wearers right to the hospital. To wit:
Trendy wheeled sneakers that let kids zip down sidewalks, across playgrounds and through mall crowds could also send them rolling into emergency rooms on a stretcher, say doctors who blame a rash of injuries on the international craze.
Apparently this is known as “heeling” which is an appropriately lame-sounding name.
But doctors from Ireland to Singapore have reported treating broken wrists, arms and ankles; dislocated elbows and even cracked skulls in children injured while wearing roller shoes.
Over a 10-week period last summer, 67 children were treated for injuries from Heelys or strap-on wheels called Street Gliders at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, according to a report in the June edition of Pediatrics.
From September 2005 through December 2006, one death and at least 64 roller-shoe injuries were reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a spokesman said last week.
And doctors in Singapore reported last year that 37 children had been treated for similar injuries at a hospital there during a seven-month period in 2004. None were wearing protective gear.
See the insanity? These kids are rocketing themselves around like they are in a demolition derby.
Heelys and their knockoffs look like gym shoes, but with wheel sockets in each heel. They can be used for walking, but the wheels pop out when users shift their weight to their heels.
Balancing on the wheels can be tricky, especially for novices. In the Irish study, most injuries were in new users and occurred when kids fell backward while trying to transfer their body weight.
Dr. Leon Benson of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Evanston, Ill., recalled treating a 9-year-old girl who’d had her Heelys for just a week when she fell and broke both wrists.
Nine-year-old Noah Woelfel of Davidsonville, Md., wasn’t a novice but still tripped and fell, breaking several fingers and wrist bones in his right hand last year.
“All it took was a tiny piece of gravel in the driveway that went up in the wheel and stopped him cold,� said his mother, Nancy. “He required surgery and pins, and he was six weeks without using his hand, right at the beginning of school.�
Again, I repeat, these shoes are deathtraps. Only professional stunt men (and women I guess) should wear them. Save the children. Save our society. Don’t let your child wear these things. It really irritates me.
