I may have been foolish when I told my friend that I would disagree with her in the follow-up post. I have heard that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at that person's footware. I wanted to respond "Horsefeathers!" but such a remark would probably put me back in the early 1900's or even earlier. I wanted to give evidence that I have a romantic soul and a nerd's brain but that neither follows from my black scuffed Wallabees.
But, I am re-thinking. First, what I can tell and what more Sherlock-y types can tell are probably very different. What do I know? My friends might have long known about my feelings and my brain from their first glance at my shoes.
Second, no one who taught statistics (and enjoyed it!) would dare base a conclusion on a sample of only 1, even less so on a personally 'contaminated' sample. My wife pointed out when she was in her hunting days, and for several decades afterwards, she wore heels. But eventually she felt too much pain from them and no longer wears them, ever. So, one thing that can be concluded from a person's shoes might be their age or the stage of life they are in.
I am a great fan of women but I have never quite grasped the reason for their apparent depth of feeling for their hair nor for their shoes. Some very male people I have known also seem to share the convictions that their hair style or the shoes they wear have a large and important effect on others. I have rarely had a large effect on anybody but when I have, I am pretty sure it was not from my hair or my shoes. My copy editor says that is no surprise, given my college haircut and my Lil' Abner stinky boots. She says they were both terrible!
There is a book called "Such A Pretty Face" by a woman who was heavier than she wanted to be all her life. Her mother and her mother's adult friends often used the title phrase in an attempt to mention a good feature and turn attention away from other details. The face tells a great deal to humans but I often feel that it is noticeably small compared to the rest of us. Similarly, a person's posture, body language, voice tone, word choice as well as their basic intelligence and awareness of self and others have always spoken most loudly to me.
