|
Reader question: Please explain this sentence: He’s a nice boy and all that but he may say things that step on your toes. My comments: “Step on your toes” is a metaphor because, apparently, other people’s words can’t fall on your toes – sometimes they even fall on deaf ears, but that’s neither here nor there. Their feet may fall on your toes inadvertently – when they try to walk by in front of you while you’re queuing for a movie ticket, waiting for a bus or something like that. In one of these cases, you probably will let out and “ouch” because it can be excruciatingly painful when someone actually do that. Things they say, on the other hand, cannot hurt. I mean, not like that. Not physically. But they can hurt you emotionally – and not a bit less painfully – and that’s where we’re at. To paraphrase our top example: He’s nice boy on the whole but he’s not always careful with what he says – his (poor) choice of words may upset people once in a while. “Stepping on someone’s toes” is an American idiom. If you analyze the situation, people who step on our toes are trying to land their feet on the ground where we’re standing. Therefore, they’re invading our land, encroaching on our territories, and metaphorically intruding on our privacy, upon our responsibilities or into sphere of influence in general. And that kind of behavior leads to conflict if we stand our ground, so to speak. It can bring us as much pain as if they really step on our toes while queuing up for a ticket in the cinema. | 
