What's your opinion on Heelys?

[jmowreader]

Heelys are "skate shoes"--athletic shoes with wheels in the heels, so that kids can use them as either shoes or rollerskates.

I'm starting to think these may be the Jarts of our time--because they encourage children to rollerskate where it's clearly inappropriate, like in stores where heavy equipment is used.

So far...let me see...I have seen:

children using customers as traffic cones so they could slalom around them
child shooting into a cross-aisle in front of a contractor shoving a huge cart of lumber, and almost getting hit by it
child shooting into a cross-aisle between a reach truck carrying a full pallet of ceramic tile and its escort, and almost getting hit by that
children skating near metal roofing laying flat on carts that put it at eye-level or neck level, and the edges and corners of metal roofing are extremely sharp

Most of us are scared of these shoes. We've seen too many kids doing too many stupid things on the shoes to think otherwise. And now, when you tell a child to stop skating in the store his or her parents get pissed off at you. We're getting the same "I'll let my child do anything I want, thanks" bullshit answer we get when we ask kids not to ride on the ends of shopping carts.

I swear...some days I think there should be a parenting license, not to be issued to anyone with no common sense.