drwex | Too Stupid to Tie His Own Shoes

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.