By Jim Hagarty
While U.S. presidential hopefuls discuss weighty issues such as the economy and how utterly stupid their opponents are (not to mention dishonest, geeky, clumsy, hard-hearted, etc.) now that America is into another big election, I believe it is time to examine an issue that, by comparison, seems to me to be equally important.
Is it wrong to wear shoes in the house? I’m not talking slippers, or “indoor” shoes. But just shoes. The kind you wear outside, to work, to the store, to the coffee shop. Is it a sin to walk from your car to your kitchen without stooping to remove your footwear?
It appears to me as though the world could be divided into these two categories: Those who allow shoes in the house and those who forbid them. And I do mean forbid.
By now, you might already be getting the idea that I favour the first option – shoes in the house. In my defence, I plead my rural background. There was never any big pile of shoes, boots and sandals by the front door at our place because the nine of us who occupied our home were all wearing them. In fact, and this was not a not uncommon feature of farmhouses of the time, we had a steel boot scraper cemented into the sidewalk by the back door steps. We were expected to use this handy device to knock the rough stuff off our footwear before we entered the “back kitchen.” I am sure if the situation was unusually nasty – boots covered in cattle manure, for example – we’d enter the home in our socks. But otherwise, we had a green light. Ironically, sometimes our socks made more of a mess than our boots, covered in straw or hay as they often were, or soaking wet if our rubber boots had sprung a leak.
Arriving at a home where it is obviously a practice to remove shoes, I have no trouble falling into line. A guest, after all, should observe the rules laid down by his hosts. But where I do have a problem is when visitors insist on removing their shoes even when the owners of the dwelling are obviously wearing theirs inside and insist their guests leave theirs on too. I know removing them may be a habit, but in my mind, it might also be interpreted as a message to your host that she really should be taking off her shoes, even if this is her home and not theirs.
So, if I see my host boldly walk into his or her house from outside without de-shoeing, I march right in as well. And I have to say, I feel more comfortable for being able to do so. The opposing principle is this: You can’t guarantee where your shoes have been and so it is better to take them off. They might have trod through some doggie doo on the way to the front door, for example, or worse. But unless the family has infants crawling around on their floors, I don’t quite get the panic. I know our floors are important, but I wonder why brooms, mops and vacuum cleaners were invented if not to clean them.
I live in a divided home where the footwear policy at any particular time depends on who gets to the front door first to welcome a guest. One half of the family remains silently approving while the visitor de-shoes and the one lone voice of sanity – me – insists, “Ah, don’t worry about your shoes.”
I am going to enter foridden, dangerous territory here, and suggest, without a shred of evidence, that an Irishman is inclined to keep his shoes on, an Englishman, to take them off. Budding genealogists take note: If your immediate ancestor is shoeless inside, check her past for English influence. If your forebear is seen fully shoed indoors, that fellow might be of Irish stock.
This whole sociological study, bereft of knowledge and facts as it is, should also involve the Dutch (they have shoes made of the same material as the kitchen floor, so shoe or de-shoe?) and the Japanese (who apparently despise shoes.)
I would like to invite the leaders of all four national political parties (yes there are four) to my house so I can see what they do when they enter it. The ones who parade right in, shoes on feet, would get my consideration at the ballot box if I was eligible to vote. The others I would write off immediately.
