Jacobs shoe is one for fashion misfit

There's no shortage of childhood traumas. These little mini-dramas of humiliation are the very backbone of who we are.

Sure, we can laugh now but at the time it didn't seem all that funny -- not if you were the kid who came to kindergarten with her shoes on the wrong feet.

It happens.

Your mom is yelling at you to hurry up: "Get dressed or you'll be late for school."

Seriously, sometimes it's just not that easy to tell your left foot from your right. So you jam the wrong feet into your shoes, slap the Velcro straps and you're good to go.

Good, that is, until that uh-oh classroom moment when some little know-it-all starts pointing and laughing.

So maybe you weren't that kid with the shoes on the wrong feet. How about the grade-schooler ridiculed by the others for your offbeat fashion choices?

For all those little girls, this shoe is for you.

Fashion is catching up with those whose "different" choices didn't make the grade in primary school.

For obvious reasons, designer Marc Jacobs calls this his "misplaced heel shoe" (marcjacobs.com, $596).

If you're looking for artistic precedent, recall Pablo Picasso's Cubist portrayals of women whose body parts he rearranged and put in places nature never intended.

Flash that little piece of art history at those meanies who made sport of your wardrobe choices a few decades ago.

Even the feel of this thoroughly modern footwear offers a childhood twinge. Walk a few steps in these shoes and you're a little unsettled, slightly bouncy.

You're back on the playground now, remembering the teeter-totter.

• In the mid-1500s, a shoe style called "chopines" was popular among women in Italy, Spain and France. Chopines had pedestals of cork or wood as tall as 24 inches and thick soles designed to protect the foot from wet or muddy streets.

• The average North American woman has 30 pairs of shoes in her closet. Most women tend to buy about six new pairs per year.