A few years ago my mom and I were out for an afternoon full of shopping for fall clothing. Her big purchase for the day were new brown leather boots. She was smitten. In fact, she loved them so much that she wore them out of the store and spent the rest of the day talking about them. She kept admiring them and asking me, “Do you like my boots?” and I would tell her how much I loved them again and again and again. It became our little joke for the afternoon. Every time she would ask me we would laugh.

A few hours later we decided we wanted a frozen yogurt from Pinkberry. There was a huge line of people when we walked in, so we lined up and proceeded to wait. After a while I got a bored and wandered off to look at the Japanese tea pots for sale. My mom was so preoccupied with what Pinkberry flavor to choose that she didn’t notice me to disappear to the corner of the store.

As I was handling a tea-pot I saw her from the corner of my eye, turn to the woman behind her (thinking it was me) and with the goofiest grin on her face she kicked out one foot, made jazz hands towards her new boots as if she was unveiling Gandhi and said  “Do you like my boooots?!” with attitude.

My mouth dropped open in shock and then I burst out laughing. It was such a ridiculous scene. The woman behind her didn’t seem to find the situation as amusing. She looked at my mother terrified (I mean clearly my mother appeared bat shit crazy!) and meekly replied “Yes, they’re very nice”. My mom went with it and said thanks, she didn’t even attempt to explain herself to the woman. Suffice to say we left Pinkberry rather quickly after that.

To this day, my mother and I still find this moment funny. When one of us is wearing boots we reenact the scene and laugh. So when I put on my snazzy my new hiking boots on Saturday for a seven mile hike, I kept kicking my foot out and asking Brian if he “liked my boots”.

Then I made him take this picture to send to my mother. It. Never. Gets. Old.

Tags: 365 til, 365 til 30, goals, Gratitude, happy, hiking, hiking boots, humor, Inspiration, Kate McClafferty, universe