Itys-Bitsy Teenie-Weenie Pink Polka Dotted Boots

So everyone on the Aleutian Islands wears the same boots, the EXTACT SAME BOOTS. The boots are rubber, ugly brown with ugly tan trim, called extra tuffs. They clash with every color and look dirty fresh out of the box.

I can understand the practicality of the boots themselves. They’re completely waterproof and pretty bomb proof. I can walk through 4 inches of water, mud, fish slime, or worse without any fear of a leak or tear. What I can’t understand is why they only come in ONE color! Why can’t we have variations or fun patterns like those cheap rain boots at department stores right before the one rain a year in CA?! If I could get a pair of plaid green boots, or ones with little goldfish swimming all over them I’d be sold.

My biggest problem with the boots is that when entering a public building such as the library, gym or church everyone must take off their boots in the entryway. So when I come back to put on my boots and leave I can never figure out which pair of ugly brown boots, among the 10 pairs of identical ugly brown boots, are mine! I actually wore one of my deckhand’s boots out to the office one day. “Didn’t you notice they were two sizes larger than usual?!?!” he asked, between spurts of uncontrollable laughter.

So I’ve come up with a solution, and no, it’s not to simply mark one side of the boots with my initials with a permanent marker, because one, that’s boring, two, it’ll probably rub off, and three, we don’t have bright pink permanent marker. My solution is to paint my boots! Of course the only paint available is the paint I personally have on hand, coral pink nail polish. So bright pink polka-dotted boots it is! (Its ok, you can sing the song in your head now … They were Itys-Bitsy Teenie-Weenie pink polka-dot boots, that she wore for the first time toda-a-ay!)

Step One: I washed my boots with soap and water to get all of the mud, slime, and as much of the Pollock scales off them as possible.

Step Two: Tested a small portion of nail polish on one boot to make sure it doesn’t eat into the rubber and royally screw my only pair of waterproof work boots.

Step Three: Attempt to paint circular polka dots all over the boots with my little nail polish brush. Who said knowing the finer points of nail polish application was not a critical job skill?!

Step Four: Pray that the boots dry before I need to wear them to go work ankle deep in fish muck. Step

Five: Never mistake my boots for anyone else’s ever again!

Problem Solved