It started out as a typical back to school shopping experience. I was bored out of my mind and desperately opposed to the idea of leaving the days of sunshine and cherry popsicles for tests, stuffy classrooms and rules. And so as my Mom tried to wrangle me into trying on just one more pair of sneakers, I whined and complained relentlessly. Eventually I gave in and sat down to try them on. I was sitting on the same uncomfortable shoe trying on bench that I’d been on for what seemed like hours trying on sneakers when…I saw them. They were beautiful, pink and had the extremely attractive trait to my seven-year-old mind of being sparkly. I immediately jumped up and pulled the shoebox down, taking them out of their crisp white tissue paper cocoon. I knew that these were no ordinary shoes. These ballet flats transcended time and space in a way that made me forget about the cold store, my headache and my annoyance. In that moment it was just them and me. I slipped them on and skipped down the hall to show my mom. I was convinced that she too would see that these shoes were obviously the magical slippers from a fairy tale. To my surprise she frowned and started to tell me about how they were impractical and wouldn’t last the last week of summer, let alone the whole school year. My fantasy world collapsed in on itself as her words hit me; I wouldn’t get to wear these Cinderella slippers after all. It seemed a bigger tragedy to me than the scene in Bambi where Bambi’s mother dies. Seeing my look of disappointment she relented.

“Well…they are on sale…do they fit?”

I nodded anxiously, “perfectly."

“And you’ll wear your old ones again this year if these don’t work out?”

I nodded again.

“Even though they pinch your toes?”

“I promise I will Mom, I swear on my life."

She chuckled for reasons unknown to me and said I could get them. I jumped up and down, and did a victory lap of the store yelling, “thank you, thank you, thank you” on repeat. A few shoppers smiled at me but most looked annoyed at my boisterous interruption of their daily activities; I couldn’t care less. Soon I would own a size six pair of the very personification of magic and I was overjoyed.

I wore the shoes home and didn’t take them off for the whole day until my parents told me that I couldn’t possibly sleep in a pair of shoes, no matter how magical. So I settled having them on my bedside table- checking every time I woke up to make sure they were still there. This was the same everyday for the rest of the week, glued to my feet in the day and under my watchful gaze at night. I danced in those shoes, I skipped in them, I spun, I cartwheeled, I summersaulted; I played in them. I took them to my elementary school’s playground (the coolest hang out as far as me and my little friends were concerned), and showed them off to a chorus of oohs and aahs. They were perfect; every speck of glitter on them was a star in my small universe. I loved those shoes and I was convinced they loved me too.

But, alas, it was not meant to be. They broke the day before school started. The soles ripped clean off. And so, much to my devastation, I spent the school year in my old, dirty white sneakers that pinched at the toes. I kept my broken magic shoes in my closet. They used to make me sad, but now, eight years later, they serve as a reminder. That no matter how hard life seems to be, it’s important to latch on to the whimsicalities. It is better to experience these painful, magic moments, no matter how fleeting, than to grow up not able to recognize the magic in the world. To find this magic we have to risk bypassing the comfort of practicality. Because even though magic can be hard to hold onto, it’s important to do just that. We have to risk pain by wearing those beautiful but fragile shoes, even though we know they make break. But no matter how painful they can end up being, these small moments of magic are what it means to truly live. We’re all so unhappy these days because we’ve become so blind to these enchanting moments that they don’t believe they exist anymore. Magic is common; it’s finding it that is rare. My seven year old self was smarter than me now, as it is with most people, because she didn’t get lost in the mundane, she recognized and created these moments and held on for dear life to each one. When I grow up, I want to be just like her.