There are a lot of grand sweeping statements about the bleeding obvious out there. Things like “You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their grocery trolley.”  Well here’s a tip: Those things in their trolley that you’re using to so cleverly decipher their inner psyche?  They put them there because they WANT them- that’s what makes them THEM.

Of course you can tell things about a person based on what they buy! People aren’t trying to hide who they are. They aren’t cleverly disguising their preferences and buying stuff they don’t want. “Hmmm, I actually want the strawberry jam, but I’ll get the apricot, it’ll throw them off the scent as to who I really am....”

On the flip side, there’s also statements that just make you go “what the?”  Things like “you can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear.” Well other than the size of their feet, I’m not really finding shoes to be a gushing fountain of information about a person. If a person has a thousand different pairs of shoes, does that make them schizophrenic? A different personality for each time they slip on a different pair of shoes?

If a person is wearing thongs, (and that’s not a G-string for the non-Aussies,  thongs = flip-flops) you could assume that they’re casual or perhaps heading to the beach. BUT in Australia, thongs can cost anything as low as $2 at a supermarket, hence they are given to prisoners as footwear. So as for the theory about what you can tell about a person by their footwear, you can’t go around assuming that every person wearing a pair of thongs is an ex inmate. Nor can you assume that a women wearing a pair of Minalo Blahniks can actually afford to be wearing them!

I can’t tell much at all about a person based solely on the shoes they wear and nor do I try-  I’m too busy walking around with my head up, seeing where I’m going and not bumping into people (see previous post “A lesson in common sense: How to be a good pedestrian)...