OFF WITH THEIR. . .

SHOES!!

When I was little, my mother had a fetish for white carpets.  Never mind there were 4 kids under 12 in our house. If we got so much as a speck of dirt on that carpet, we were spanked.  Any wonder we learned to take our shoes off at the door?  Ever since, I’ve hung this poem of mine, which my oldest engraved in wood, on the front door of every home I’ve lived in.  My kids often balked at having to take their shoes off.  When they were teenagers, and I kept clean socks by the door for their friends to put on, there was significant eye rolling.

At first, my insistence had less to do with germs and more to do with cleanliness, but that has changed. A University of Arizona study says that the average shoe carries 421,000 units of bacteria and that 96% of our shoes are contaminated with E. coli.  Think about it: wearing your shoes inside, spreads fecal matter from the kitchen to the bedroom. Recently, an audience member wearing flip flops at The Today Show, had his shoes swabbed.  They were …