Sensational Sammy’s Super Shoelaces.

There once was a little boy named Sammy Samuels. Sammy was a normal little boy. He liked to go to the park. He liked to play superheroes with his best friend, Donald Donaldson. He liked to put bugs in the girl that sat in front of him in class, Patty Patters’, hair. But one thing made Sammy different from all the other boys: Sammy never wore anything on his feet.

Sammy HATED shoes and socks. His mother and father scolded and wagged their fingers at him, saying “Sammy, you have to wear shoes at church!” Or “Sammy, you can’t go to the store in your bare feet!” Or “Sammy, if you don’t put your shoes on right this instant, you are grounded!”

Sammy spent a lot of time grounded.

What Sammy’s mother and father didn’t know was that it wasn’t that Sammy didn’t want to wear shoes and socks—sometimes his little toes did get a little cold. The problem was that Sammy knew what would happen if he wore anything on his feet: the socks would gobble up his toes.

It’s true. You see, Sammy’s bedroom just happened to have been built above the opening to a magic portal. Under Sammy’s bed sat the opening to The Land of the Lost Left Socks. This is where all of the left socks go after they disappear in the dryer. They live in this land, where they gather together and plot and plan as to how they will eventually rise again to the surface and make the humans who stuff them into stinky shoes their stinky slaves. Sammy could hear them whispering at night as he lay in his bed. The socks knew he was there. They knew he could hear.

“Sssssammmmy,” they whispered from under the dust ruffle, “Ssssssammmmy. We know you’re theeeere, Ssssssammy. We’re going to gobble your toes. Don’t put us on, Ssssammy, or we’re gobble your toes.”

Sammy didn’t really sleep much.

One day, after weeks of not sleeping and months of being grounded, Sammy’s grandmother came to visit. Grandmother was a wise old woman who always wore wildflowers in her hat. Her name was Sally Samuels and when she was younger she was a circus performer, dancing dramatically on the dangerous tightrope, high above the heads of the crowd. She had been the star of the show until a small sparrow swooped down towards her during her act, causing her to fall down from her high rope into a pile of feathers. Seeing it as a sign, she quit the circus and became a professional birdwatcher, traveling the world looking for rare and exotic species of birds.

Whenever Grandmother would visit, she would always make sure to bring presents from her travels—an ornate and beautiful mask for Mother, a leather-bound book of folk songs for Father, and for Sammy, she always brought something extra, extra special. This particular visit, after giving her presents to Mother and Father, she took Sammy aside to give him his in private.

“Sammy,” Grandmother said, “I heard that you won’t wear anything in your feet. Your mother and father are very worried about you. What is wrong?”

“It’s the socks, Grandmother,” Sammy stated, “They want to gobble my toes. I hear them whispering at night from under my bed. If I put anything on, they’ll gobble my toes right up!”

“I see,” answered Grandmother, nodding her head wisely, “I thought it was something like that, which I why I brought you an extra, extra, extra special present this time.”

And with that, she pulled from her beaded bag Sammy’s extra, extra, extra special present: a pair of shoelaces. But not just any shoelaces—these where the most stupendously super shoelaces that Sammy had ever seen! They were long and white with bright blue lightning bolts that glowed in the dark. Sammy loved them.

“They’re magic shoelaces,” Grandmother explained, “I got them from a wise old man who knew much about the secret ways of socks. If you put them in your shoes, he told me, the socks will be powerless and won’t be able to gobble your toes.”

“Really?” Sammy asked, his eyes full of wonder and excitement over his sensational new shoelaces, “Really, they won’t be able to gobble my toes?”

“Really really,” Grandmother answered, smiling, “Now come on, let’s go see what your mother cooked for dinner. I heard her saying that she’s making your favorite.”

And she did make Sammy’s favorite: macaroni and mushrooms with multicoloured meatballs. It was very good.

What Sammy didn’t know, however, as he ate his delightful dinner, was that the socks had a spy who had been crouched under the couch when his grandmother gave him his extra, extra, extra special present. Theodore Threadbare the Third, sock spy extraordinaire had heard every word of Grandmother’s plan to help Sammy escape his toe gobbled fate. Theodore slinked across the floor back to Sammy’s bedroom to tell the king of this plan.

That night, as Sammy lay in bed, his super shoelaces stored safely in his pajama pants’ pocket, the socks from under his bed started their attack. They pooled together all of their socky powers and cast a spell over Sammy that shrunk him down, down, down, smaller and smaller, until he was roughly the size of a small athletic tube sock. Then they crawled up onto his bed and carried him away to the underground Land of the Lost Left Socks to be put on trial for the Sock King, Laurence the Long. Sammy tried to fight, but his arms were trapped at his sides by his captors’ cottony bodies as they wrapped themselves around him. He tried to scream for help, but his voice was much too soft and squeaky now that he was shrunk for anyone to hear. There was nothing he could do but allow them to carry him away, thinking as hard as he could for a way to escape.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the sock soldiers dropped him rather rudely in front of King Laurence’s throne. The socks that had wrapped themselves around Sammy to hold him still unwrapped themselves, allowing him to stand up on his own. Sammy was now face to face with the King of the Lost Left Socks, King Laurence the Long. King Laurence was a discarded knee-high pantyhose that had been lost by a certain Marian Martini the night that she decided to quit her job as a secretary for a used car salesman and pursue her dream career of women’s roller derby. Laurence was the loveliest leader that the Land of the Lost Left Socks ever had.

King Laurence loomed over Sammy, who gulped and curled his toes as much as he could to hide them.

“Give us the shoelaces!” the king demanded.

“Wh…what shoelaces?” stammered Sammy, his hand in his pajama pants’ pocket, holding his shoelaces as tight as he could.

“You know what shoelaces,” growled Theodore Threadbare the Third from beside the king, “The ones your granny gave you as a gift.”

“Ohhh….” Sammy sighed, “Those shoelaces. Yeah, I don’t have them.” He was lying, of course, since they were right there in his pocket, but the last thing he wanted was to have the Socks get their hands on his secret weapon, which had started to grow strangely warm in his pocket.

“He’s lying,” Theodore Threadbare whispered into the king’s ear, “I saw him put them in his pocket.”

The king nodded, glaring at poor Sammy, who could feel himself start to sweat as he could feel all of the socks staring at him. There had to be a way out of this, but how? He could feel the shoelaces becoming warmer and warmer in his hand. He began to think of a plan.

“Give us the shoelaces, now, Human Child, and we will only gobble the toes off of one of your feet,” stated the Sock King.

The shoelaces were almost burning hot. Sammy knew what he had to do. “I guess that sounds like a good deal,” he said, pulling the shoelaces out of his pocket. They were glowing bright blue. He held them out to the king, “Here. You can have them.”

As the king reached for them, however, the glowing shoelaces stretched out from Sammy’s hand, wrapping themselves around the king’s body, so that he couldn’t move a muscle.

“Your Majesty!” shouted Theodore Threadbare. He turned towards Sammy, reaching for his sword, “Release him, Child! Or I will gobble up ALL of your toes!”

“Not so fast,” Sammy answered, “take one step closer, and the shoelaces will squeeze so hard that your king’s eyes will pop out!”

Theodore, who had lost his left eye during a battle with the terrible teddies from Tedditopia knew how much it hurt and backed down.

“What do you want?” begged King Laurence, “anything you ask, Child, it will be yours if you release me.”

Sammy thought for a minute. What did he want? He really wanted a new baseball bat. Or maybe a new cape for when he played superheroes with Donald Donaldson. Or a different kind of bug to put in Patty Patters’ hair. But really, above all, what he really, really wanted, he thought as he yawned loudly, was to get some sleep. And to stop being grounded all the time. Which meant that he could really only ask for one thing:

“I want you to stop gobbling toes,” Sammy stated.

“Stop gobbling toes?!” exclaimed the king, “But if we don’t gobble toes, what else will we do?”

“I don’t know,” Sammy said sarcastically, “keep people’s toes warm like normal socks?”

“Hmmm,” hmmmed the king, “I guess we hadn’t thought of that. Alright, Human Child, from this day forth I will make a royal decree: no more gobbling of toes! From now on we shall only keep toes comfy and cozy.”

Sammy smiled and tugged on his end of the shoelaces. They released the king and coiled back in Sammy’s hand. He put them back in his pocket.

“Come on, kid,” Theodore Threadbare the Third sighed, “let’s get you back to bed.”

And so off they went, back to the land above where the socks again pooled together all of their socky powers and made Sammy grow up, up, up, taller and taller until he was back to being normal boy sized. With a wave to Theodore Threadbare, Sammy climbed back into bed and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

From that day on, Sammy wore his socks and shoes, his super stupendous shoelaces tied in a perfect bow. The whispers from under his bed had stopped and he didn’t have to worry about the socks gobbling his toes. He played super heroes with Donald Donaldson and put bugs in Patty Patters’ hair. And every night he would fall asleep right away, holding his super shoelaces tightly in his hands, the blue lightning bolts glowing brightly.

He was never grounded, again.

The end.