Too Stupid to Tie His Own Shoes
Sep. 8th, 2006 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexThis 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.
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.
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Date: 2006-09-10 12:35 pm (UTC)I didn't discover this til 10th grade, when we had an assignment to describe a process, and the teacher said if we wanted something really challenging do tying your shoes, so I did, and he carefully followed my directions and ended up with tied shoes but he said it was very different from the normal way.
Consequently, when I had a child, I told her dad, you teach her how to tie her shoes, because otherwise she'll learn weird from me.
Which is why I have a six-year-old who doesnt' know how to tie shoes.