No Shoes, No Service

“No bare feet!” Mom ordered.

School was out and summer had finally begun. Everyone in the neighborhood was outside. A few were playing a game of kickball in the street, a few others were riding bikes, and one kid’s mom had hooked up the sprinkler for her to run through. Closed-toed shoes had been exchanged for flip-flops or abandoned altogether. Kathy, Evy, Patty, and Maryann were zigzagging from hot pavement into grassy lawns and back again to toughen the soles of their feet. Within two weeks, they’d all be able to walk to the pool and back without the aid of any foot wear. Their feet would be black with dirt by the end of each day, and their sense of freedom would be palpable. But, I was forbidden to indulge in such traditions. Shoes were required at all times.

Ostensibly, the requirement of shoes was because Mom didn’t want anyone tracking in dirt on the bottoms of their filthy bare feet. This would have made some sense if we were then required to take shoes off when we entered the house, but we weren’t. Instead of questioning her reasoning, however, I simply obeyed and shrugged my shoulders if my friends asked me for an explanation. My friends were consequently not allowed in during the summer unless they first put shoes on their feet.

Later in life I came to know a number of people who required, regardless of the time of year or occasion, that visitors to their home remove their shoes upon entering. The first time someone asked me to remove my shoes at the door, I stared blankly, wondering if I had heard them correctly. It felt to me a bit obscene to ask someone to remove an essential element of one’s outfit. Take off your coat, hat, and gloves, yes, but not a piece of one’s ensemble. Nevertheless, I removed my shoes to then stride through the home in my stocking feet, acutely uncomfortable with such a show of brazen disdain for my upbringing.

Soon after I met Marie, she asked, “You wear an 8, right?” She was scrutinizing my shoes and I, too, looked down at my feet. “Yes, an 8,” I confirmed.

“I have a whole box of size 8 shoes that I can no longer wear since giving birth to my son. They’re all very good brands—Aigner, Esprit, Naturalizer. Would you like to come over and take a look?” Being a frugal sort, I jumped at the opportunity to take someone’s cast-offs and made a plan to visit.

I knocked on Marie’s door, and, baby on hip, she asked me to come in and take off my shoes and socks. “My socks?” I asked. “Yes, please,” she answered. “I’m wearing pantyhose,” I explained. She stared at me. I removed my pantyhose. I followed her through her cluttered and unkempt house wondering all the while how dirty my feet would be by the time I put my shoes back on. She led me down into the basement, squeezing by the multiple laundry baskets full of clothes and around to an area stacked high with boxes and bins. Marie pointed toward a large box that was atop two others and said, “The shoes are in that one.” I maneuvered into a narrow opening and stepped up on a plastic milk carton so that I could peer into the box of shoes. She was right, they were all of very good quality and came in a rainbow of colors and styles. I pawed through the box selecting a few that appealed to me. Marie bounced the baby on her hip and said, “Take as many as you want.” I found about a half dozen pair I liked, tried them on in the basement area, and settled on four that I thought would suit me. “These four look good,” I concluded as I stepped gingerly back through the narrow space. “Great,” Marie said. “I’m thinking around $20 a pair.” My stomach cinched up as I realized my mistake. Or had I been manipulated? In any case, I felt embarrassed. “Oh, I didn’t know you were selling them.” Marie looked at me a bit disgusted and said, “I can’t just give those shoes away, I paid almost $100 each for many of them.” I tried to save face as I followed her back up the stairs to my pantyhose and pumps. I apologized several times for my confusion, and left.

Several years later, Marie asked a friend of mine to help her hang some paintings in her newly purchased home on Long Island Sound. David drove the almost 45 minutes to the new house, only to be told by Marie when he arrived that she had forgotten the keys. David, wanting to save her the round trip, and save himself the almost two-hour wait that would be required, took a look around the house to see if by any chance there was a way in without the key. On the back side, up on the second story, he saw that a window was open about four inches. He asked Marie about how the windows worked, saw that he could, without too much trouble, climb the tree nearest the open window, and suggested to her that perhaps he could gain entry that way. Marie agreed that it was worth a try.

Though it wasn’t easy, David was able to get enough of a purchase on a few sawn-off knobs of the tree’s trunk to make it to a branch that stretched very close to the window. With Marie anxiously looking on, David shimmied along the branch and was able to place his feet on the window sill. He then had enough leverage to remove the screen and easily push the window open wide enough to climb through. He yelled down to Marie, “I’m going in, meet you at the front door.” Marie turned to dash toward the front of the house, but caught herself just in time to yell, “Oh David! Take off your shoes and socks.”

In the window of many restaurants, the sign reads: No Shoes, No Service. My mother would have enjoyed the joke of hanging such a sign in her home, and I think I would too.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2015