Shoe Debris

One of the rules in the flat that Yaxlich shares with Mr E is that people should take off their shoes in the hallway before coming up the stairs. This is presumably because Mr E doesn't want the carpets to get dirty as opposed to any kind of secret foot fetish that he may have. A little earlier this afternoon, Yaxlich went outside for a cigarette and forgot to take his shoes off when he got back indoors. He came straight up the stairs, went into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee. It was only when he came out of the kitchen that he spotted a single wet, brown leaf at the top of the stairs that he must have brought in with him from outside. This leaf was a fairly unremarkable leaf. It had no clear distinguishing features. Nothing about it suggested that it was anything other than a regular leaf. This is why Yaxlich was somewhat confused when his subconscious referred to it as "shoe debris". The voice in his head distinctly said "Oh look, Yaxlich, you have left some shoe debris at the top of the stairs". Yaxlich had never referred to anything as shoe debris previously and cannot recall anyone else ever doing so either so why did his subconscious not refer to it as a leaf when a leaf is what it was? Yaxlich pondered this for a few moments before coming to the conclusion that he had just invented a new phrase. There could be no other explanation. In the same way that Isaac Newton discovered gravity by being hit on the head with an apple thrown by William Tell, Yaxlich had invented a new phrase because he had ignored the strict house rules imposed by Mr E. If you think about it, the two scenarios are uncannily similar. He sat proudly in front of his monitor for several minutes. It isn’t every day that you invent a new phase for the English language. This would be his legacy to the world. In hundreds of years time, English students would look up the phrase “shoe debris” in Wikipedia and see that it was invented by Yaxlich Blogspot on the 12th of January 2007 after having a cigarette on a particularly blustery day. Imagine his disappointment when he checked on Google and discovered that there were already 155 references for the phrase “shoe debris”. Damn you, Google, and your all seeing eye.