Don't forget to take your shoes off

It’s been a long tradition in some homes to take your shoes off when entering.

This was a common practice in earlier days when it was so easy to track in because everything around was dirty or muddy.

Now most homes have cement sidewalks and grassy areas where this is not so much a problem.

We had a mud room at the back-door area when I was young, and it was the practice to take your shoes off before entering. We lived on a farm at the time, and it was easy to track in dirt from the field.

Entering without taking your shoes off would be rewarded by a scornful look from my mother. They didn’t have vacuum cleaners then. You cleaned the old-fashioned way, sweep.

Later when we moved to town, we had a mud room at the back door. And it wasn’t until much later that the practice of taking your shoes off upon entering the house was relaxed. Then we had carpets and a vacuum cleaner.

You should see some of the mud rooms now, designed for a level of luxury not experienced by most people.

Some still practice this, maybe a carryover from days long past, or just because it saves a lot of extra work.

I got tripped up at the Shwedagon Pagoda while visiting Myanmar (Burma). The Buddhist temple is huge and is, they claim, 2,500 years old. There is so much gold leaf patted on all surfaces that the entire structure suffers to keep from collapsing.

As in all temples in the Far East, you take your shoes off before entering.

On this one occasion I was so struck by the beauty of the place I forgot to do so. 

Well it didn’t take very long for a horde of the faithful to let me know about it. I exited quickly, and, fully embarrassed, parted with my shoes.

That is tricky in itself because there were hundreds of shoes on the sidewalk leading in. You forget where you put your shoes and you might be in your stocking feet while you look for your own.

I should have been more careful because I had visited shrines in both Japan and Thailand and had taken my shoes off then.

They estimate that there are thousands of tons of gold on the Burmese structure, and at the very top, thousands of diamonds, with a 76-carat diamond at the very top. Any wonder that your eyes are looking up most of the time. Made me wonder why it seemed so easy for some to notice I still had my shoes on.

I scanned the sea of shoes and most were slip-on variety, making it a little easier to find my own.

If you are in a situation where you might have to take your shoes off, make sure you wear socks without holes in them.

The old traditional mud room also held coats and other clothes used for the out of doors, usually because they were as dirty as the shoes or boots. This was particularly true of our farm because we had horses and a milk cow. I hated that cow, never learning how to milk a cow.

I remember how dirty you were when you came in from the barn.

To the many people who still exercise the “shoes off” practice, good luck.