Question:
I went on a date with a boy and it went well. We will be going out again. On the first date, however, he kept slipping off his slip-on shoes under the table. I know that people who wear slip-ons sometimes do that, but having it being done on a date really bothered me. My mother agreed that it was strange, but came up with 101 excuses for why he might have done it (e.g., they were new shoes, he needed to air out, etc.). My father said not to be petty.
What do the panelists say?
Answer:
Although not stated explicitly, it appears to me that this footwear faux-pas was the lone caesura in this young man’s otherwise courteous and kempt comportment, as opposed to it being but the cherry on top of a broad-based bedraggled bearing. If, in fact, that is the case, I would be greatly inclined to agree with the sentiment that there could be countless, comprehensible clarifications capable of conciliating the feelings of inharmoniousness towards this mild oddity, and that it is thus a negligible nuisance lacking in consequence and unworthy of scrutiny.
Anecdotally, the wife of a close friend of mine recently remarked that she encountered this very same predicament whilst dating the young man who was to become her future husband. Not only is this fellow now an exemplary and caring husband and father, he is also a prodigious talmid chochom and a successful professional. Perhaps, then, there is indeed precedent to overlook this small dissonance in decorum.
May the Levusho Tzedaka see to it that we are all motzei chain v’sechel tov b’enei Elokim v’adam.
