Too Stupid to Tie His Own Shoes

[drwex]

This year in school they're teaching K to tie his shoes. Good, practical skill that. Pygment has gotten him some lace-up sneakers (as opposed to the velcro-close ones we've had in past) and he's digging right in. Except...

This morning we're in a rush and he comes to me for help with tying them. Now "help" means "show me how to do this" not "do it for me" (a notable difference between 6-year-olds and 3-year-olds, in case you were wondering). So here I am trying to show him how to tie laces and I realize several things:

(a) I've never taught anyone to tie their own shoes.
(b) doing this in mirror-reverse is harder than just tying something for someone else (like laces on the back of a dress or corset)
(c) I have no frelling clue how to explain what I'm doing. I resort to breaking it down to step-by-step with us passing the laces back and forth because I can't do it without laces in my hands, which leads me to realize
(d) the way I tie my own shoes is full of wasted steps and things I oughtn't do, like picking up one of the laces to make a loop when I'm just going to drop that loop anyway.

All day today my own laces have been coming untied, which I suspect is a side effect of me actually thinking about typing my shoes, rather than just tying them.

Which goes to prove I'm clearly too stupid to tie my own shoes.

Comments

[ceo]

I learned a better way to tie my shoes as an adult, the "Better Bow" method detailed here. It's far more secure, especially with slippery round laces.

Of course, I also lace my shoes in a double-helix pattern, like this.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

How is the double-helis pattern different from regular lacing? is it just "if it comes out under the eyelet then it goes in under the next eyelet, same with over" as opposed to "always go through the bottom" or "always go through the top"?

[ceo]

Yes, with the addition that the lace is first threaded under one bottom eyelet and over the other one, so all the left-to-right laces are on top and the right-to-left ones on the bottom, or vice versa&mdash I do one shoe one way and the other the other way, for symmetry. The effect is a series of diagonal lines running up the shoe. Ask me next time I se you, now that it's cold enough I'm usually not wearing sandals.