My Biggest Pet Peeve

Over the past three to four years, I have had a ridiculous amount of bad luck when it comes to buying shoes. For the previous four to five years, my office shoes and sneakers had proven to be extraordinarily durable, and the shoes that I had worn during the winter months dated back more than ten years, to when I was living in Nara. However, misfortune hit ever since I needed to replace my office shoes when the soles became too worn down. I chose the same brand of shoes that had served me so well for around five years but got the size badly wrong because the shoes were clearly too large for my feet, resulting in uncomfortable slippage at the heel. I tried to fix the situation by purchasing insoles, but even with two insoles per shoe, they were still too loose. Finally, I decided to just start over and buy the same pair of shoes one size down. Even then, the insoles were required, but for a brief period of time, they fit almost perfectly. That is, until someone stepped on the back of my heel as I was getting off the train one night. This brings me to my biggest pet peeve, which is people walking unnecessarily close behind me, which results in them stepping on my shoe when this is entirely avoidable. The fact that someone has stepped on the heel of your shoe means that they have entered your personal space. Worst still, after that, the heel loses its shape, the fit becomes loose, and the shoe is never the same again.

This started an unfortunate pattern. I replaced my sneakers later the same year with the same model that had served me so well for the previous five years. Initially, the fit was just right. However, again, something happened when a passenger on a train chose the exact moment I was getting off to drag her wheeled suitcase across, and the heel of my shoe got caught under her suitcase for the tiniest fraction of a second. Unfortunately, again the shoe was never the same after that. The final straw happened around a year later, when someone again stepped on my shoe as I was boarding a train. Shortly after that, I had to give up wearing those shoes completely, because the tread on the soles was low in the first place and had already worn down to the point where walking in them on rainy days had become a dangerous activity.

I replaced both of those shoes earlier this year, and unbelievably enough, the same pattern has repeated itself yet again. My latest pair of sneakers got stepped on completely unnecessarily, I bought insoles, the fit was briefly fine again, and then they got stepped on once again. The issue is that when one’s shoes are stepped on, it’s more than a small issue, because the condition of the shoe is affected, and one of course has to buy a new pair soon after.

Ming

Vocabulary
wear down (phrasal verb) – to become, or make something become, gradually smaller or smoother through continuous use or rubbing
slippage (noun) – causing something to be slippery
pet peeve (noun) – something that particularly annoys you
the final straw (idiom) – the last in a series of unpleasant events that makes you feel you cannot continue to accept a bad situation