So, I'm a week and a day away from moving in with my boyfriend. My English boyfriend. Who was brought up wearing shoes inside his house. Now, this is one of my pet hates but it's also a topic upon which I feel myself extremely conflicted. I essentially believe, and was brought up by my Asian mummy accordingly, that it's disgusting to bring the shit of the world that you traipse around in all day into your home, which should not be somewhere you might catch ecoli but somewhere you could, if you really wanted to, roll around on the floor/carpets without worrying what dirt and germs lay about. I know I sound like an anal clean-freak but, looking round my room, I can tell you that definitely is NOT the case. It's just the shoe thing.
In university at least I could mark my territory around my bedroom, which was a shoe-free zone. And in the past couple of years I've been living with a very nice, cosmopolitan friend who, at least initially, was very good with the "no shoes in the house" thing. But now, moving into a one-bedroom flat where we share all spaces (and all floors) how can I enforce this rule without seeming like an anal cow? Short of making a sign saying "No Shoes Allowed" and providing a stack of size 5-10 slippers and foot spray for all visitors (the boyfriend has some friends with very smelly feet), what can I do? How does one make their boyfriend more Asian?
3 comments:
Make him wear a kimono and eat rice for breakfast. Duh.
I don't understand, I have lived with white people in white countries and have had white boyfriends - everyone takes their shoes off in the house. Is it really an east-west thing? Perhaps it's just an English thing. A bad habit they picked up perhaps from catching the ebola in east Africa? Apparently, wearing shoes reduces the chances. True story, I read it in a textbook in my African Studies class in second year. I'd reference it, but I can't be arsed.
Ahhh... maybe it's because asians sit and lie on the floor when a. watching tv and b. eating?
I was amazed the first time I went to a home where people WORE SHOES INSIDE!!! (That and having the Danish Dish "Boller i Karry" (similar to meatballs in curry) where the rice is just drowned in curry sauce, and not even spicy. Granted, I was not very old at that time...)
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