The Art of Tying Your Shoes......

I was standing in front of my kindergartner’s classroom the other day and I thought, "what ever happened to shoes with laces"? You know, the long white things that you form into rabbit ears and twist around just so or maybe even around the tree and through the hole, depending on the way your parents taught you and their parents taught them... I vividly remember my mom teaching me this all too important technique, the art of tying my shoes. I must admit it took a bit of concentration on my part and probably a whole lot of patience on my mom’s part, but I still remember the jubilation when I finally did it. When I finally became master of those unwieldy long, white laces and tied my own shoes!

Standing there in front of my son’s class, in a sea of kids wearing some form of slip-on shoe or those completely studded with hook-and-loop straps (mind you, my son was right there with the hook-and-loop gang), it suddenly made me sad for this little right of passage. Of course, when I was growing up, you really didn’t have a choice, it was either mary-janes or shoes with laces and you were expected to master the art of tying your shoes, pretty darn quick, or else. Well, I don’t know what the “or-else” part was but you pretty much understood that you didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I know, things change, innovations come around that make our lives easier, that get us through our routines a little quicker, so we can take on our hectic days. I have to admit, the person who thought to put hook-and-loop tape on children’s shoes was a pure genius but sometimes I long for those little rites of passage, those things you were expected to master, no exceptions.

I am certainly not going to rid my kid’s closets of all those slip-ons and hook-and-loop encrusted shoes but I think I need to go buy my little guy a pair of shoes with laces……if they still make them, that is.