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Letters To a Young Gentleman: Honor People With Your Shoes

My Dear Sons,

I know I'm regularly telling you to get your shoes off the middle of the floor. Or out of the back yard. Or off of our bed. I hope you don't think we're "anti-shoes". I especially hope we're not badgering and discouraging you by our insistence about something that's obviously not the end of the world.

But of course being a young gentleman is not about simply avoiding world-ending mistakes. It's about learning how to be yourself without forcing others to be someone other than themselves. And, believe it or not, shoes, and what you do with them, are a daily opportunity to practice emerging gentlemanliness.

WHERE YOU TREAD WITH YOUR SHOES COUNTS FOR GENTLEMANLINESS

When you go into someone else's home, they have opened up to you their most personal space. They may have spent time picking up before your arrival to present their home to you as a place where you feel welcome and comfortable.

The first thing you can do to express your gratitude for their hospitality is to, undramatically, courteously, ask them

"Would it be best for me to remove my shoes?"

Say it in a way that makes them feel like it's absolutely no big deal whatsoever if they say "yes, that would be kind of you." You're not there to pass judgment on their 'house rules'. You're there to reciprocate their gesture of hospitality with your own gesture of submission to their customs.

Even if you just came from the shoe store with new sneakers or just had your penny loafers re-soled and shined by the cobbler, make this gentlemanly gesture.

WHICH SHOES YOU WEAR COUNTS FOR GENTLEMANLINESS

Someone once said "If you want to know if someone is well-dressed, look at their shoes."

Young men: we don't put our clothes and shoes on to "impress". We put them on to set others at ease through our situational appropriateness.

One time, I walked into a very traditional, downtown gothic revival church in the South with Birkenstock sandals on. This was a mistake, because I was thinking about my own comfort, and the expression of my own personality. I wasn't thinking of the congregation as my host, and myself as a guest.

I've also showed up to sporting events in wingtip shoes, which probably also gave the community assembled there the sense that I didn't care about the context. Instead, I probably made them feel like I was trying to assert my feigned superiority over them. I should have slipped on my Birkenstock sandals.

HONOR PEOPLE WITH YOUR SHOES

The key, young men, to a gentlemanly life, is to take every opportunity and occasion to honor others with your demeanor, attitude, speech and gestures. All the "PUT YOUR SHOES WHERE THEY BELONG!" grief that we're giving you now, if we admit it, is really just our present frustration with tripping over your tennis shoes for the 392,405,301st time.

Yet, we can all learn to look at these situations as exercises in others-centered gestures of gentlemanliness. Forgive us for when we've been merely exasperated. And we'll all work to gently remind one another of how we might honor those who are hosting us, not least with the things we do with our shoes.

Your Loving Father,

ARS

A Letter to a Young Gentleman

I was hugely pregnant and chasing around my two young boys.  A lady looked at me in all my exhaustion and asked if I was having a boy or a girl.

"Another boy" I said.

"That's good," she said. "Raise those boys up right.  We need more good men in this world"

I never saw her again, but I think of her often and am encouraged by what she told me in passing.  I even use these words to encourage other parents who have multiple boys. It is so true, the world really does need more gentlemen.  So my other full-time-job is trying to raise these boys into gentlemen.

We hope you'll enjoy our new blog series, "Letters to a Young Gentleman".  Each week, we'll share a new letter.

Dear Sons,

I tell you all the time that you need to be a gentleman.  Do you even know what that means?  A gentleman is someone who is a good friend, family member, kind-hearted and humble.  It doesn't matter how much money you have, how great your clothes are or how smart you are.  Being a gentleman is something different.

Being a gentleman doesn't mean fitting into a restrictive mold and forgetting about who you are.  I want you to know that you can be yourself always. You are a fascinating young man with a unique perspective on life.

It takes time, patience and persistance.  But I see you becoming more like a gentleman every day.  You are learning how to share with your brothers and give up your seat for them and others.  I'm proud of you.  I want to teach you so much more.

Love,

Mommy