No Shoe Fetish Here.

When I was a kid I was taught that shoes are the most defining feature of a person’s dress. They’re the first thing everybody looks at, I was told. Shabby shoes betray a shabby person. Shoes that are clean, in good condition and well heeled are the mark of an upright and respectable person. If your shoes are good, you can hold your head up in any company. Cue the spit-and-polish mentality, but only for a while.

It occurred to me when I was cleaning a pair of my own shoes this evening that I never notice other people’s shoes. I routinely study all manner of things about people: their eyes in particular, but also their general dress style, their facial features and how they use them, their body shape, the style and condition of their hair, how they walk, how they talk, the kind of voice they have, their deportment, and in the case of women, their legs. (Sorry.) A person’s shoes are about the only aspect of their external features I don’t notice. (Apart from the colour of their eyes, that is, but I’ve already said that in another post.)

So now I’m wondering whether this is a rejection-of-roots thing or just another sign of my oddness. I also wonder whether I shall now succumb to paranoia with regard to my shoes. It’s unlikely. I freely confess that I’m often neurotic, but never paranoid.