Where do those single shoes you see lying on the side of the road come from?

The few times I’ve actually seen a shoe land on the side of the road, they were thrown from car windows by small children who thought it was hilarious.

They’re from another dimension.

I leave them there to make you ask questions like this :)

Sometimes it rains lone shoes instead of dogs and cats.

those shoes belong to people who got hit by a car… they literally were knocked out of their shoes.

I actually pass by accidents all the time and see shoes on opposite sides of the road. that’s the only thing I can think of.

@zephyr826 – That is so awesome. One of the reasons why this question was considered “unanswerable” was (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that no one ever saw the shoes get to where they were, so we could never know for certain. Now I have an eyewitness. :)

I’ve seen them get thrown out of cars, fall out of trucks, fall off of people’s feet as they ride in the back of a truck or inside a car with their feet hanging out a window, fall off babies in strollers whose parents are not paying attention, one of them breaks and gets discarded roadside/beachside instead of through proper channels, someone throws them out of a condo window…

My personal favorite: Someone takes one off road-side to throw at someone else and never retrieves it ;)

Many folk out there hoping their prince or princess will come round with the other one!

So they leave them out there and wait impatiently for the shoe fitting session.

^ g1.

Those are shoes that have hit upon hard times. They’ve ended up having problems with their mates and have lost their homes. They wander the streets, alone and poor.

Heather Mills McCartney.Possibly.

I wrote a whole short story about this phenomenon once about 30 years ago. Having had little kids (and been one), I never wondered about the small shoes. It’s the single man’s shoe that always mystified me.

Perhaps they are searching for that one lone sock that has gone astray. Their sole mate.

They probably come from the persons who are still wearing the matching shoes who were hanging their feet out the window at the time the one laying by the side of the road fell off. That might or might not be an indication of the dangers (or follies) of hanging one’s feet out of the window while a vehicle is in motion.

Aaah, the stories those mystirious lone shoes could tell…or at least, the stories that Stephen King could make up about it.

… and how about those unpaired gloves .?

I can’t attest to all shoes, but I can for several. I delivered pizzas some years ago, and an already crappy job sucked even more when people wouldn’t tip. On several occasions, when I was completely jaded and someone gave me a quarter with a cheerful “keep the change”, I felt some sort of justice needed to occur so I wouldn’t feel I’d wasted my time. Sometimes people would leave a pair of shoes outside their apartment door, on the porch, etc… On these occasions I would take one shoe and throw it out my car window several blocks away. I felt the inconvenience they would suffer the next day when they left the house and began looking around for the other shoe, only to eventually be forced to wear a less desirable pair, was worth my time.

As wrong as I know that is, I’m still kind of glad I did it. The lesson: tip people who you are customarily required to tip.

If anyone criticizes me for malicious behavior, I’ll agree you are correct.

I don’t know about single shoes. Out here when you get a new pair of boots, you hang the old ones on the fence. This started out as charity, if you needed boots and were broke, you could take a pair from the fence.

@cockswain: This is why I videotape my properties. I love it when someone tries some stupid crime on me like this. My favorite was someone who broke in and stole all the camera equipment not realizing the images were uploaded instantly.

Single shoes and socks have interested me for a long time. I’m certain that each shoe has a unique story to tell, but of course, we’ll never get to hear it. I like to think that they were escaping a pair of really stinky feet. They made a run for it, but only one has made it to safety. I like to think that there are shoe S & R parties that are formed up. It’s is only that they are limited by our looking at them. They have to drop and pretend to be inanimate when we’re looking!

@Trillian everyone knows that singled socks are parted from their pairs in the clothes dryer.

@WestRiverrat – Funny you should mention boots and fences.. when I was driving out east 10 years ago, there was a stretch of Highway 5 from N. to S. California that had what seemed to be miles of boots and shoes on the fence posts. Actually, it was one of the coolest things I ever saw.. I kind of couldn’t believe it and kept expecting it to end, but it just went on and on!

I think @Jeruba and I must have been living in the same dimension 30 years ago.
I remember a conversation over drinks about lone shoes and boots by the side of the road. I have mostly noticed them on corners.
My theory is that sometimes people leave a pair on the roof of their car while loading the car and then drive away forgetting that they are up there.
or…
people on crutches with a cast on one foot get frustrated and throw the shoe away that they can’t wear at the moment.
and I know this because I have done it…sigh

@WestRiverrat, where’s “out here”?

I used to live on Beacon Hill in Boston. The unfashionable side, where all the young transients rented funky overpriced apartments for the length of one lease. The night before trash day, you could furnish an apartment with the castoffs left at the curb by people who had upgraded slightly—everything from throw rugs and clothes hampers to sofas and mattresses. (They’d probably upgraded on trash day the week before. I used to think you could follow one rocky kitchen chair or Woolworth’s table lamp all over Beacon Hill from Tuesday to Tuesday.) Urban equivalent of parking your old boots on the fence, I guess.

@wilma, the ones that mystify me the most are the solitary shoes along the freeway. There’s something almost like poetry in them.

I always think about this, too. I never threw my shoes out the car window when I was little!

No, no, @ChocolateReigns, not your shoe. Your sister’s shoe.

One-legged people who stumbled into the roadway and whose corpses were swept up by the Big Zamboni. Happens all the time.

Some asshole who thinks it’s funny to throw your shoes out the car window.

I always figured they came from trucks of stuff when people were moving. Like they threw everything in the back of a pick-up and something flies off….maybe sometimes it’s a shoe?
But I like @toomuchcoffee911 ‘s answer! LOL

Hopalong Cassidy?

Glad to know I’m not the only one who wonders about lost shoes on the side of the road. I’ve often thought of taking photos of them and making a calendar or writing a novel in the vein of Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” about those intriguing shoes.

my son lost a shoe while riding a bike crossing a busy intersection. He stood by the side of the rode watching his shoe be run over and over again and end up in the middle of the intersection. I don’t think in that case you really want to run into the middle of the street to retreive it. He came home with one shoe on and one shoe off. I threw the other shoe in another street. perhaps the two shoes shall meet again. I always wondered about the lone shoe on the road.

@pdq2010 Your son’s name isn’t John, is it?

I have a facebook page dedicated to this mystery!!! It is called “single shoes by the road”

Many people are on it wondering the same thing!

Welcome to Fluther @fattythedragon! Like you, this is the question that led me to join the site.

I had no idea this question was so influential!