On missing out on shoe's clues

I had lunch by myself today. Since I was a “singlet”, the restaurant seated me right next to the serving area so that I could dine while appreciating the sounds of glasses clinking and food debris being scraped from plates. While I was enjoying my coffee, I could not help but overhear two young women who were discussing their involvement in a recent argument. The discussion began with a very detailed rendering of what everyone had said. It sounded like…

“Then she like said, “you shouldn’t like have been in his car to like begin with". Then I like said, “yeah, like well, ….”

Overall, it was a pretty unremarkable exchange. Then a remarkable thing happened. Midway through her dialogue, she suddenly inserted a person-by-person, very detailed description of what shoes every woman who had been present in the room had been wearing.

Wow.

I am not going to comment on the spasmodic use of the word, “like”.

I am not going to comment on the differences between the way men and women perceive interpersonal situations. I have been married long enough to know that I would end up on the wrong end of that discussion. I would be bringing a Chicken McNugget to a gunfight.

No, what I found to be most fascinating was that the shoe descriptions seemed to provide the other young woman with real insights into the personalities and motives of all those who had been present. Where did this come from? When they were teaching the “shoe” theory in interpersonal communications class, I must have been absent. Have I been missing something all these years?

I decided that the next time that I am involved in a lively exchange of differing viewpoints with a group of people, I am going to disengage for a moment and check out everyone’s shoes. Perhaps, there is something more to “the language of leather and laces” than the title of a porn flick. I will report back here with my findings.