Where the Shoe Misfits

There was an old woman Who took off her shoe, Her son was being punched So she knew what to do.

Can anybody out there name the toughest mother in the world? Come on, think hard. We mean the absolute toughest, bravest, strongest, scrappiest, meanest mother alive.

Could it be that plastic surgeon in Washington who spent 25 months in jail on contempt-of-court charges rather than turn over custody of her child to a man she deemed unfit? Yeah, maybe.

Or could it be some woman who enters triathlons, or operates heavy equipment, or serves in the armed forces, or runs a large household, or teaches aerobics, or chairs a billion-dollar corporation?

Nope, not hardly.

The big, bad mama who today owns the respect of every mother’s son is none other than Minna Wilson, 62, of Great Britain--or, as we have come to know and love her, Shoeless Min.

Fast gaining fame as the individual with the first really big shoe since Ed Sullivan, this is the woman who saw her little boy being beaten up and valiantly rushed to his rescue, removing her high-heeled pump and pummeling the big brute who was beating on him.

The one teeny-weeny hitch in the matter was that her son happened to be boxing for a shot at the British light-heavyweight championship at the time.

Minna Wilson thus became Mommy Pugilist, and no doubt will soon be an ABC movie of the week. Rarely, if ever, outside of the animal kingdom, has a mother so defended her cub.

When she gave birth and the doctor slapped her baby, Minna Wilson probably slapped the doctor.

Imagine if you will the prospect of, say, Ickey Woods’ mother dashing onto the football field when her son got hurt and walloping his tackler on the helmet. Or Al Unser Jr.’s mother clobbering Emerson Fittipaldi with a tire iron. Or Pete Rose’s mom whapping investigator John Dowd on the head with his 250-page report.

Shoeless Min has been banned from all future boxing events involving her son--by her son. Tony Wilson said he forbids her from attending any more of his fights. Yes, he has sent her to life’s neutral corner.

Still, the kid is proud. He’s practically going around singing: “She ain’t a light-heavy, she’s my mother.” After all, how many mothers are willing not only to fight for their child, but to ruin a perfectly nice pair of shoes in the process?

This was a case of finding and losing a heel at the same time. The human one was Steve McCarthy, who was hitting Minna’s son in the face and ribs and such, the big bully.

By the time Round 3 rolled around, Mother Wilson could bear to watch no more. She attacked.

Mowing down rows of spectators and moving right past security guards, Shoeless Min slipped through the ropes, stampeded across the ring and started going upside Steve McCarthy’s head with her lethal weapon. She opened a bad cut on McCarthy’s head--as no doubt testified by the ring physician, Dr. Scholl.

Chaos ensued. McCarthy left the ring. Spectators threw trash. Tony Wilson was declared the winner, because McCarthy refused to return. Minna Wilson limped home, where representatives of Reebok, L.A. Gear and Florsheim were eagerly waiting with endorsement contracts.

Jimmy Tibbs, Wilson’s manager--Tony Wilson, that is--later insisted that the fighter’s mother merely did “what any mum would do under the circumstances.”

Why, sure. From the beginning of time, when cave women saw their children being carried off by pterodactyls, they went running with large wooden clubs to bonk the reptile-birds on the beak.

If Mama Balboa had been at ringside to see what was being done to her poor boy Rocky, she surely would have jumped into the ring and boxed that Apollo Creed person’s ears.

Mothers have an obligation to keep their kids from being abused. More mothers need to get personally involved. Don’t be insulted at being called a battle-ax. Get your ax and go battle.

Your son gets hit with a pitch, scale the wall and go after the pitcher. Your son gets his sweater pulled over his head by another hockey player, slide right out there and belt him with your skate.

At the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Yannick Noah verbally blistered his Israeli opponent after the guy shouted an insult at Yannick’s mother, who was in the audience. But where was she? Why wasn’t she out there whacking the guy with Yannick’s racket?

In the movie “Sea of Love,” Al Pacino’s chief murder suspect is a woman who sells shoes for a living. This movie is excellent, but it could have been better. Each of the victims could have been found with a size 7 alligator pump sticking out of his neck.