19 May

shoe in phrases

Who taught: Carl, Andrew and Jake

Gabby Reece with her family

Today, I stumbled upon an interesting post, Gabby Reece‘s bucket list. She listed 10 things she wants to do before she dies. I really like one of them, “Live in The Now!” In the post, she said,

There are guys who work-work-work and have no time to enjoy it. I don’t get it. What I’m snobby about is my time. Life is happening right now: I tell my friends, if you’re unhappy, change it or stop talking about it.

Well, I guess she is right. If you are unhappy now and working too much now because you think you will be happy later, when do you think you would be happy? So, hope you are all enjoying your now!

Last week, I went to Louisville, KY for business trip with my boss, Carl. At the airport, we were talking about having children. He said, “Well, it is interesting, being a parent. You know, when you are young, you made bunch of mistakes which makes your parents unhappy or concerned. I understand what they felt before since the shoe is on the other foot.” Another good example of proper usage of this expression would be “teachers being in classroom as students.” I think teachers should have a lot more chances to be in classroom as students so that they should think about their own teaching methodology to make their classes much more fun. What do you think? Don’t you agree?

Today, I had dinner together with my friends, Patrick, Jake, Andrew and Alex. I brought the shoe expression up. And we talked about the other useful expressions with “shoe” in it.

waiting for the other shoe to drop

This expression is something you can use to describe the situation that you know something is going to happen due to the event which already happened. I found really reasonable origin of this expression, a story happened in an inn, and I think this would really help your understanding of the expression.

A guest who checked into an inn one night was warned to be quiet because the guest in the room next to his was a light sleeper. As he undressed for bed, he dropped one shoe, which, sure enough, awakened the other guest. He managed to get the other shoe off in silence, and got into bed. An hour later, he heard a pounding on the wall and a shout: “When are you going to drop the other shoe?” Thus the term “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
One takeaway from today’s post! If you hear any new expression, try to find out the origin of it, it really helps you to remember the expression and use it later. And, don’t forget! Live in The Now!