I put on a long sleeved shirt and slipped into my oxblood loafers as Adele and I were ready to get into her car to go to Shou-ting's home for lunch.

Shou-ting loves to cook, she had a catering business for ex-pats in Saudi Arabia many years ago. Today she invites Adele, myself, and Del and Vona. Adele is in Vona's knitting group, I'm in Shou-ting's tai chi group, and Del helps all of us with our yard projects.

When we got to Shou-ting's home, she gave us a tour of her garden where I noticed she had an oroblanco grapefruit tree that was overloaded with fruit. As oroblancos are a favorite of mine, and hard to get in the produce store, I mentioned my interest and she let me have half a dozen.

Then we entered her home where she pointed out a shoe bench with an array of slippers and asked that we change from our shoes to a pair of slippers. I picked a gray pair of backless foam slippers, as Adele picked a pair of slippers for herself. I left my shoes besides the changing bench.

Removing shoes upon entering a home seems to be a fashion in California—I don't remember that it was much of a practice in Pennsylvania. It may have been imported from Japan where they traditionally ate their meals siting on mats on the floor. It is considered very impolite not to take off your shoes before entering a house in Japan.

The custom may have spread to other parts of Asia, Shou-ting is from Taiwan, and it is very fashionable in California. I'm told that it makes sense in Sacramento because there is quite an amount of dust on the streets and it dirty's up the house—whatever.

Shou-ting was preparing a groaning board of foods based on the hot pot concept.

Soon Vona and Del arrived and joined us. We had an amazing meal with pieces of beef, salmon, chicken-tuna balls, shrimp, tofu and rice noodles that we cooked in the boiling hot pot. To that, we added spinach and cabbage, then scooped it out, dipped it in a spicy sauce and ate it with a side of steamed rice.

After this two hour dinner, Adele and I were needing to leave. As we approached the front door, I slipped out of the grey slippers and looked for my shoes. They were nowhere to be found.

We looked in front, around the sides and in back of the changing bench. We looked through the collection of slippers on the top and bottom shelves of the bench. My shoes were nowhere to be found.

Where could my shoes be? Who would have taken my shoes? How would I get home without my shoes? I guess I could wear the slippers—but then they would be unclean for indoor use.

So, I called everyone over to the bench to help me: Adele, Shou-ting, Vona and Del. Well, it was getting time for Vona and Del to leave, so as Del kicked off his "so-called slippers," we all sighed to realize that the slippers that he kicked off were my shoes.

He had mistaken my oxblood loafers for a pair of slippers. Well, in retrospect, it seems a little silly that I took off my loafers so that I wouldn't walk into the house wearing them. Then Del saw my loafers and put them on—defeating the whole purpose.

Oh well. Maybe it had nothing to do with utility. It was all about tradition—and by changing shoes, the tradition was followed.

~ Al Zagofsky