Crocs Feed Escalators

At the beginning of the summer I bought Crocs for Sugar and Spice. Sugar got a mint green pair in a maryjane style and Spice a lavender pair in the same style. They immediately fell in love with their Crocs and started wearing them every day. Sugar, in particular, fell in love with hers and refused to wear any other shoe, with the exception of putting on her sneakers for tennis lessons and immediately returning to her Crocs when the lesson was over. I quickly realized that these were going to become our long-standing summer shoes.

About 4 days after we bought their Crocs we went to the movies with one of Sugar's friends, Ladybug, and her mom, Lilac Blue. We went to the AMC Empire 25 theater on 42nd Street, which is full of escalators. Really LONNNNGGGG tall escalators that go up the side of the building and look out through a huge glass wall on to 42nd street. It's pretty cool riding up - unless you're really afraid of heights, then it would probably be pretty terrifying. But I get a thrill from heights, so I love it.

After the movie, we rode down a series of shorter escalators. On the second one, Spice insisted on standing on the stairs on her own rather than being carried. She stood firmly in the center of the step with Lilac Blue on the step behind her and me on the step in front, turned around facing her to make certain she was steady, and ready to step off when the time came.

About half-way down the escalator, Spice turned around to look at LilacBlue. When she turned back around, her shoe was gone - just the strap hung around her ankle. I immediately scooped her up, and the next second, her shoe appeared on the step above, torn and covered in thick, black grease. We were all baffled! How did the shoe get ripped off her foot? Clearly, there must be something wrong with the escalator. At first we just wanted to get out of there, but then, we thought about it and decided that if there was something wrong with the escalator, then we should report it to the manager. So that's what we did.

The manager was very nice about it, while protecting himself and the theater. He gave us some passes, reimbursed us for the cost of the mangled shoe, and had us sign a release that said we wouldn't hold them liable for anything. I was fine with that. I didn't want anything more than to just let them know that they needed to check out the escalator.

We were sure that escalator was faulty and we thanked our lucky stars that Spice was wearing Crocs rather than her other favorite shoes, her Dora sandals. We were convinced that had she been wearing sandals it would have been her toes, rather than the shoes that were caught in the escalator. We encouraged her to wear Crocs more than sandals for the rest of the summer. Super Crocs had saved her feet!!

Or so we thought until yesterday when the Bull saw a news report and, through the Whole Family, I saw this article which basically says that there have been numerous incidents all over the country and even in other countries, of kids wearing Crocs, particularly young children, getting injured on escalators.

By the time I finished reading, I was shaking. The escalator wasn't faulty! If my Spice had been wearing her sandals the whole incident would never have happened. It was the Crocs! And we actually encouraged her to wear them more because we thought they'd protected her feet. Fortunately the whole escalator thing freaked me out enough that I did tend to carry Spice on escalators more than usual for the rest of the summer. But when I think what could have happened...

From the AP article, it seems that the Crocs company is downplaying the risk. I hope that they move away from that tactic and at the very least put a warning on the shoes. At least let parents know the risks they're taking. Ideally though, I think they should probably stop making/marketing these shoes for children under 5 years old.