On Shoes and Beggars
Scraping beggars off of the soles of your shoes is the only reliable way to keep your shoes — and, by extension, your carpet — completely unpolluted. Coating your shoes in graphite before you go out walking helps, but you’ll still get beggar on them at least once in a while. Sometimes poop, also, but mostly beggars.
An expert beggar can glide under your shoes and squeeze into the crease behind and above your toes without you even noticing. His bewitching mimosa recipe will distract you from the serum that he slips into your wine, until you and your soul drop into the vortex of shrimp tails that lies behind the forbidden doors of the Etch-a-Sketch factory.
Because of this, you can’t just rubberize your footwear and Teflon-coat them all and hope for the best. You must instead be constantly vigilant, always ready to scrub them with a doily and some aqueous water to keep them shiny and new. I mean, who wants to talk to someone who has beggar on their shoes? Not I! I’d turn smartly on my turning foot and walk right out of the room without even a second glance. How would you feel then? Wishing you’d cleaned your shoes better? I’d hope so.
Try taking a trip to Newark, New Jersey one day, and check out the shoes on the amputee in the corner of the airport. His formal shoe repair business is what keeps him in fancy shoes that are the equal of anything you’d find on Wall Street or even Rhode Island Avenue. He doesn’t campaign for moderation in nude foot adornment, he goes all out and recommends that everyone wear clean shoes at least once in their lives.
My own personal pair of shoes has started to leak. I don’t think this is due to beggars or poop or anything like that, I think it’s due to those irritating miniature bulldozers that show up at night and bulldoze your shoes around. They just aren’t very careful, and my theory is that all the holes in my shoes are because of those guys. Why can’t they watch where they’re going? Now I need new shoes, all because of their carelessness. You’d think they were getting kickbacks from the shoe industry or something.
In conclusion, shoes and beggars are both complicated things, and both need to be washed and scraped on a daily basis to keep them smelling like fresh azaleas and as shiny new as bags of chickpeas soaked in gasoline. Mmm, smell those gasoline chickpeas!