Volume 5, Entry 27: Shoelaces

Habits and Edits and Bugs—oh my!

I never learned how to tie my shoes.

Okay, okay. I confess: that’s clickbait. Let me rephrase, your honor.

I never learned how to tie my shoes properly.

My parents tried to teach me, and unlike potty training and the alphabet, the shoe-tying thing never stuck. There’s an animated movie, Rock-A-Doodle, about a down-on-his-luck rooster that includes a song outlining the methodology; I can still sing the song but never execute the task. It just never clicked for my fingers, a fact that frustrated the adults in my life so thoroughly that they told me. Understandably, I became pretty sensitive about it.

I got punched in the face during Sunday School once, but the closest I ever came to punching someone was over my shoelaces. In my last soccer game, my laces became untied, so the referee gave me time to fix them. Doing so next to the opposing sideline, I fumbled and had to restart, prompting an assistant coach to make a crack about the “toddler” unable to tie his shoes. That was the first time I ever told an adult to fuck off and the only time I ever needed teammates to hold me back.

At first, my mom covered up my intellectual failure by purchasing Velcro shoes for her oldest. Velcro shoes are great! It takes one second to secure both shoes. It’s quick and easy. No fancy technique is needed. But my feet grew quite big quite quickly, and I quickly outgrew the flaps and faced my dilemma anew.

Mine became a hopeless case. I overheard multiple conversations about my concerning failure, but the additional urgency to master over-under-around-and-through-ing only exacerbated the problem. I should have been able; I wrote neatly, I threw a baseball well, I could beat the handheld Land of the Lost game—I had zero hand-eye coordination issues. Why couldn’t I master tying my shoes?

I’m 38, so I’ve worn my fair share of shoes. How did I manage? How did I ever master the dark arts of tying the triple knot?

My friend Danelle taught me.

We were in late first grade by then, and I had my first sleepover at her house. We ate dinner and played games, and then her mom read us The Lorax as a bedtime story. Perfectly memorable night for six- and seven-year-olds.

But when I got up the following day, I needed to put on my shoes, and there the untied laces sat. I was mortified, thinking I would embarrass myself in front of Danelle, when she tapped my shoulder and showed me how.

Her strategy’s simplicity was pure witchcraft. Danelle’s fingers moved carefully, but all the moves made sense: the resulting bow wasn’t a magical flourish at the end but a deliberate creation. She talked me through each step of her “bunny ears” method, and we walked down the stairs to breakfast with four tied shoes between us.

To say I was proud understates how I felt. I couldn’t wait to get home and show my mom what I’d learned from my friend. With uncharacteristic courage, I unknotted my shoes to demonstrate my new skill and successfully tied my third and fourth shoes ever.

I got this feedback:

“Yeah, but you’re doing it wrong!”

With no Internet to quickly demonstrate that even massive shoe manufacturers deem Danelle’s technique as a valid and exceedingly common approach, my victory was short-lived. I could tie my shoes, but only the wrong way. Instead of championing Danelle’s ingenuity or my perseverance, it went in my head that I could only achieve the task through impropriety. Nobody could tell from my feet, but I was still a failure.

I’ve been tying my shoes Danelle’s way for over three decades, so no, I don’t think about that rebuke daily. I own too many shoes to let 1993’s offenses get to me.

That doesn’t mean that my experience with shoe-tying failure hasn’t still affected present-day me. When I was little, I did think about my inherent failure every time I tied my shoes, which wasn’t fun. Thus, I made it my mission to minimize my lace looping. I’d tie those suckers one time, triple-knotted until my fingers hurt, and then slip them on over and over again.

My knots? They stayed tight. No question, Danelle taught me well. But while the knots remained intact, slipping into a pair of shoes isn’t ideal. They become looser every time, and soon, your feet slip around inside, particularly as friction wears them down. What once were perfectly-sized shoes become mediocre, less secure fits. And something happens to your feet if your shoes don’t fit well.

They blister.

Just as pitchers get finger blisters from the repeated abrasion of baseballs firing out of their hands, so too can runners and walkers get blisters for their trouble. Extreme ones who put in 45+ miles per day especially face this risk.

Which is to say, me. I have massive blisters on my feet that make walking, the thing I do the most of out of anything, frequently painful. I have two major ones on the side of my right foot and five significant hot spots spread across my left. They’re great for visualizing Physics—you can pinpoint precisely where I apply force when I step—but they’re less great when you stroll around the park. They’re noticeable at best but excruciating at worst.

And they result from not just my walking habits but also my poor shoe maintenance. A tiny kernel of failure from before Justin Bieber was born has combined with back problems, sore knees, and an obsession with efficiency to curate precisely the methodology for building blisters.

Someday, I’ll need to go back to the podiatrist for assistance, but for the present, I want to fix this myself. And I’ve been working this last month to do exactly that and unlearn my bad behavior. There’s just one problem:

Unlearning habits is fucking hard.

Artwork by Michelle Yee

*****

“You missed your deadline.”

“I know that. You don’t have to tell me that.”

“Yes, I do. The whole point of a deadline—”

“I know how deadlines work.”

“—is meeting it. That’s why you set a deadline. Look at the word.”

“You’re talking to me like I’m a child.”

“Deadline. It’s a line, and if you cross it, you’re dead. Or the piece is dead.”

“I get what a deadline is.”

“So what the hell? Is the piece dead?”

“Which one?”

“Which one? The one you pitched! The shoelace one!”

“Oh. That one.”

“The one you said you’d cracked when we checked in yesterday about the treadmill piece.”

“They’re the same piece, Jim.”

“So they’re both dead?”

“Just like your line. Yeah.”

“How? You said you had it and—”

“I did have it.”

“—you were deep in there.”

“I was! I was on fire after the restart.”

“That’s what you told me. So what happened?”

“It stopped working.”

“What? How?”

“It’s never that simple, Jim.”

“Try me. I dare you.”

“Well, shit. I got through everything about shoelaces—the full history, man. I talked about the Rock-A-Doodle song. I talked about the near-fight with the soccer coach. I even had a link to Nike’s website showing Danelle’s technique. It was all there: my entire history of struggling to tie my shoes. I mean, it’s still there. I didn’t delete it or anything.”

“Then what’s the problem? Finish the damn piece. Do your job.”

“I can’t. It’s a non-starter.”

“Bullshit. A non-starter? You started the piece!”

“Why are you so pedantic?”

“Editor’s job—especially when he has nothing to edit. Go finish the shoelaces thing. Then I can do my job instead of talking to you.”

“Yeah, but I can’t. The piece breaks down from there. The minute I tied that knot—”

“Mr. Clever all of a sudden.”

“—the damn thing collapsed.”

“Why?”

“Because the second part was about now. The whole point of the shoelaces stuff was to explain where the bad habit of not tying them started and how it ultimately led to the massive blisters.”

“Uh-huh. That’s chalk shit for you. So tell me what I’m missing here.”

“Yeah, that first part is. But the second part addressed deprogramming that habit before pivoting into the real story.”

“Okay. So go write that.”

“Not okay! It’s hard to describe intentional thinking. I originally thought it would be like ‘Here’s what it looks like to unlearn a habit’, but that doesn’t work: it just looks like me tying my shoes. I look like a dude carefully and mechanically tying his shoes every morning.”

“Not exactly Christopher Nolan stuff, but so what? You’ve written about less. You’ve written about barrels and Rickrolls and HVAC systems—”

“HVAC was about wedding photos.”

“—and, oh right, yeah. But you get it. Who cares if it’s small? You’re obsessed with small shit.”

“The intro was small. And that part I wrote fine. It was everything else that broke down.”

“What was wrong after the intro?”

“Everything. I had to describe the actual work then.”

“Of tying your shoes every morning?”

“No. Of reprogramming my brain.”

“You lost me. Isn’t that what the shoe tying was?”

“Yes. Shoe tying is what it looks like. But the reprogramming isn’t the shoe-tying—it’s the internal voice that has to talk over the other voice calling me lazy and telling me to hurry. It’s renegotiating how I think every morning when I wake up and immediately bend, twist, and waste time. It’s intellectually exhausting, and I feel like an idiot every time.”

“Unlearning shit is impossible.”

“I know. That’s the whole point of the piece.”

“So write that.”

“It’s not that easy, Jim. The deeper I got, the more nuance I found and—“

“No, shut up. I’m not talking about the nuance. I’m talking about shoelaces. Just write the damn thing. Describe what it’s like to talk yourself through tying them. What does that new voice sound like? How does it work?”

“Like you want me to go write it? I told you: the piece is DOA. It’s dead.”

“Shove it. Just tell me now. Describe it out loud.”

“No! That’s super awkward.”

“So is being an editor with nothing to edit. Just describe it, asshole. Don’t think about what it’ll look like on the page.”

“You’re not clever, Jim. I see what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go. Start.”

“Fine. Uhm, well…The new voice reminds me of the Muppet Babies for some reason. There was this character, Nanny, who the viewer heard but saw only the legs of. She cared for the babies, but she was also so much bigger than them that she was basically their God. And she would tell them to do stuff in this gentle but firm manner that was always ‘It’s time to pick up your toys, Kermit” and Kermit would just do it because Nanny-God commanded it. At least, I think that’s what happened? It’s been a while since I saw an episode. Did you know a few of them are lost media? It’s fascinating how—”

“Now I see what you’re doing. No tangents. The voice.”

“You’re a jerk, Jim.”

“That’s what they pay me for. Yeah. Continue.”

“Uh, where was—oh, yeah. Nanny-God. So that’s what it sounds like. It says things like ‘It’s time to put on your socks’ and ‘Tie them well’ and that sorta thing. She’s instructive and clear in Her directions; She’s gentle but forceful, too. When I object or start to whine about the time I’m wasting, Nanny-God just repeats Herself over and over again.”

“Does she get more forceful?”

“Not really. She’s always the same gentle and forceful, like a stern first-grade teacher. She gives me corrective feedback, which comes out like corrective feedback from a person so practiced at giving it that She does it as automatically as breathing. It’s futile to object—well, no. It’s not that it’s futile to object so much as She talks to me like it’s futile to object.”

“So She’s never more intense than gentle and forceful?”

“Okay, this whole capitalizing “She” and Nanny-God idea is so ridiculous. The voice isn’t even gendered; it’s just a voice. I don’t want to keep doing—”

“Shut up. Do your job. You made the Nanny-God bed, so now you lie in it. Does this instructional voice ever change character?”

“Yes. Sometimes, she’s intensely disappointed in me. If the garbage men pass by or a package arrives and I need to go outside, I should untie and remove my indoor shoes, but that adds whole minutes to the task, so I slip them off and another pair on, and then the voice scolds me.”

“That’s it? That’s the powerful Nanny-God helping you unlearn habits?”

“Please let me stop talking about this. I don’t want to write this. I can’t do it.”

“You have to. You’ve come this far. Finish it.”

“No. Let me write about something else.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“What are you going to write about then? And no more Taylor Swift—you dip into that well too much.”

“Uhm, uh—the Fourth of July!”

“What about it?”

“The, uh, the—oh! That time I sang the National Anthem on the Fourth of July and got kinda choked up mid-song and how that’s all complicated now but—”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Leitch did it last week.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. You knew that. What else?”

“I could write about alcohol?”

“What? I thought you were saving that.”

“I was, but…it’s summer-themed!”

“You’re gonna throw that topic away to survive week 27? You’ll rush it, you’ll mess it up, and then you’ll regret it. Next.”

“I could talk about Sporcle quizzes!”

“You keep pitching this, and I keep telling you you’re nuts.”

“No, no. Hear me out. It’s about Sporcle, but it’s actually about learning. I, like, I uh, I use that Quarterback quiz to explain my methodology, and then I apply it to something else like…well, like…got it! Like that house on the walk that I slowly figured out! It’s like, I slowly learned those names the same way I slowly learned that house’s whole deal.”

“So it’s not about Sporcle?”

“It is. It’s about Sporcle, but it’s not really about Sporcle, you know?”

“You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“What? Why? It’s the same thing as the shoelaces piece!”

“In what way?”

“In that it’s not really about tying my shoes.”

“Okay, yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s about how you unlearn bad habits. So the shoelaces are a way to address unlearning.”

“Not quite.”

“You’ve lost me again. What are you writing about when you write about shoelaces and unlearning if it’s neither shoelaces nor unlearning?”

“Futility.”

“What? Where the hell does that come from?”

“Never mind. I don’t want—”

“Oh no! You brought it up; you’re gonna talk about it. I’m all ears for your futility.”

“But—”

“No buts. What is the futility?”

“The futility is the whole unlearning thing. Like, this whole thing is futile.”

“How? You’re tying your shoes all the time now, right?”

“Yeah, I’m tying my shoes. I’m also carefully picking up my feet on the treadmill, doing more pull-ups, working on only two chapters daily, and not looking at the clock all the time.”

“And congrats to you for all of that. By which I mean: how the hell is this futile?”

“Go back to my description of the voice.”

“What? The Muppet Babies thing again?”

“Yes.”

“Nanny-God. Yeah. What about it?”

“I described Her guiding voice as a first-grade teacher’s.”

“I don’t have the transcript in front of me, but sure. I vaguely remember it.”

“What’s odd about that, Jim?”

“All of it. This whole thing is pretty out there.”

“Do you remember my first-grade teacher?”

“Sure. It was, uh, Graham. Mrs. Graham.”

“It was.”

“Okay?”

“Mrs. Graham was super short.”

“That tracks.”

“I was almost her height already.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So what?”

“Nanny wasn’t a god in Muppet Babies; she was just some regular lady. In fact, if you proportioned her out based on the size the Muppet Babies themselves had to be, I’d bet she wasn’t even that tall.”

“You’ve lost me ag—”

“I know that She isn’t powerful. My efforts to unlearn are futile. Sure, I might fix the shoe habit as my blisters improve or do better on the treadmill, but I can’t unlearn the self-loathing, the cynicism, or the darker stuff. Nanny-God is just a woman commanding baby puppets. I know that She is she, and she’s no match for the other voice that’s still there, that’s always right there in the shadows behind Nanny-God, saying nothing but breathing just loudly enough that I can always hear it. Always behind her and waiting for her to leave the room so it can stalk me and—”

“Why are you such a pessimist? C’mon, kid! You’re tying your shoes—every day! It’s working. Write about it because it’s working!”

“No. It’s not, Jim.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve been listening to Nanny-God for months, and the other monster’s still here. I’ve been scribbling out positives every day, and I’ve been facing down demon after demon. Look at some of the shit I’ve grappled with! Body dysmorphia, bullying, my relationship with my dad, suicidality, data obsession, even sleep hygiene! I’m doing the work she tells me to do.”

“You have. Bravo. You want an award for it or something?”

“No. But I do want to stop talking about this.”

“Too late. We’re in the weeds now. Keep talking about how powerless Nanny-God is. There’s something there for sure.”

“I feel miserable when I try. I don’t want to.”

“Well, you’ve gotta. Remember the whole deadline thing? You’re gonna disappoint people that way. Is that what you want?”

“I want you to leave me alone.”

“You moron. You want your editor to leave you alone?”

“Wait.”

“Shit, another pause? Gimme a break. What is it now?”

“I…I don’t have an editor.”

“Seriously? This guy.”

“No. I don’t. I don’t have one.”

“I’m right in front of your fat face, asshole!”

“Wait.”

“I’m done waiting! Write about your puny, pointless Nanny-God and how you’ll never feel better.”

“Wait. I know who you are, Jim. I do. I see through this whole harried-sitcom-editor thing you’re doing.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“On the contrary: I’ve found you.”

“Fuck you. Accusing a fella who’s doin’ his job? I’ve been damn supportive of you this whole time! And you go…accusin’ me? The nerve of you!”

“I didn’t understand it right away. I thought of you as me—or another part of me. This was supposed to be—”

“Why’re you lecturing me? You ain’t Scooby Doo, kid, and you ain’t ripping any mask off my face!”

“Excuse me. This was supposed to be a conversation with myself about how I couldn’t pick a topic. I’d narrate all the ideas I considered—“

“We did that!”

“—and then it would end on meta joke about how I could just write an entire piece about the topics I didn’t write about, and make it meta so no one will notice.”

“That’s cute.”

“Yeah. That was the idea. That was my plan. But you hijacked it.”

“I what? Now I’m a hijacker? You’ve got a screw loose, kid.”

“You did. All of a sudden, I’m talking about Nanny-God and futility again, and every time I pushed back, you pushed me right back into the piece. You wanted more and more and more.”

“That’s called being an editor, kid. I’m on your side!”

“But you’re not. I stopped writing the shoelaces piece intentionally.”

“That was your first mistake.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was an important decision.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t answer you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve engineered this whole thing for precisely this moment.”

“I have not!”

“You have. You weren’t trying to tear down a community center for real estate or scare people away from your illegal mining operation. You did it to get me to say what scared me away from finishing the shoelaces piece.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! We’re talking about shoelaces! There’s nothing terrifying about tying your shoes!”

“There is.”

“Try me.”

“No. That’s what you want me to do.”

“Yes! Because I’m your editor!”

“No, it’s because you want me to say it. And I’m not going to give you—“

“JUST SAY IT, YOU FAT FUCKING PIG! SAY IT! ADMIT IT! THIS WHOLE BULLSHIT CONVERSATION ALREADY LED YOU THERE! JUST SAY IT AND RIP THE BANDAID OFF, YOU PATHETIC, UGLY, SELF-HATING WUSS! JUST SAY WHAT YOU FOUND AND LET ME HAVE WHAT I CAME FOR!”

“It doesn’t work! There! You happy? It doesn’t work! None of it works! I still feel rotten underneath. I still fall into the same grooves! I’ve felt that way the whole year. You’re an indestructible cockroach I can’t get out of my head! You let me have the shoelaces, but then you torture me with everything else. You can take off your D’Onofrio mask now, asshole! I said it! You win. You always win! It’s all just window dressing; it’s all still there! You’re always breathing in the background behind the better habits and the gratitude lists and The Gray Valley and everything else. You win. You always win, and you always will win. I surrender. It’s yours. It’s yours. You win, roach. You win. You can have it.”

“Well, it’s about damn time! That human mask is muggy as shit. Here, you put it on.”

“No.”

“PUT IT ON.”

“Okay.”

“Naw, take it off. It’s more fun when I see your eyes.”

“Okay.”

“That’s better. Thank you. I’m glad you remember who the boss is here. I’m glad—”

“NANNY-GOD! KILL THE COCKROACH!”

CRUNCH

“…”

“It’s time to finish the piece.”

“…”

“No. It’s time to finish the piece.”

“But it’s stupid. This isn’t what I wanted to write. He hijac—”

“Stop whining. It’s time to finish the piece.”

“I can’t post this! The entire thing is—”

“No. It’s time to finish the piece. Do it now.”

“But…he’s still alive under your shoe.”

“He is.”

“Why won’t he just die?”

“It’s time to finish the piece. No more dallying. Let’s go.”

“But Nanny! I can still hear him.”

“Yes, you can. But it’s time to finish the piece.”

“But he’s still there! How do I keep going when I know he’s right—”

“The same way you did during the last six months. Now, finish the piece. I’m not going to ask you again.”

“But I’m scared.”

“As you should be. Don’t let yourself forget that he’s there again.”

“But thinking about him makes me sad.”

“Be that as it may. Don’t be surprised by him again. That’s how he scurries in.”

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I lost track of him.”

“You did, but he’s oozing under my shoe right now.”

“I didn’t mean to ruin your favorite shoe.”

“You did not ruin my shoe. This is why I am here.”

“Thank you, Nanny.”

“You’re welcome. Now, it’s really time to finish the piece.”

“Okay.”

“Go write your gratitude list. I know you missed it dealing with him.”

“Okay.”

“Do it first. First thing.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“And then go for a walk.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“And I better see you untie and retie those shoes—both pairs!”

“Yes, Nanny. Of course. Yes.”

“Good. Now, for the last time, it’s time to finish the piece.”

“Thank you, Nanny. I’m very lucky to have you.”

“Gratitude list. Shoes. Walk. Go!”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“And please remember one more thing.”

“Yes, Nanny?”

“I am you just as much as he is.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“My foot is your foot.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“You solved the mystery.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“You crushed the cockroach.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“When he gets out, you’ll do it again.”

“I hope so.”

“What was that?”

“I’m sorry. Yes, Nanny.”

“Gratitude list. Shoes. Walk.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“But finish this piece first.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Now finish the piece.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

---

Thank you to Michelle Yee for another cool piece of art. I appreciate that her choice angled toward the first half whereas mine centered on the second. My favorite aspect of her illustration is easy to miss at first; if it didn’t catch your eye, look at the right shoe.

This piece developed organically in the order I presented it. Later, I returned to clean up the first half of the editor’s dialogue to clarify what became clear later, but I sought to maintain loyalty to the original version I wrote out.

Two prominent takeaways did not make the final piece so I could maintain fidelity to my first draft. The first involved Will Leitch’s piece about thinking during the National Anthem. The second involved photographing yellow butterflies. I tried to include both ideas later, but they always felt like forced inclusions.

These are the hardest pieces for me to share.

Thanks for reading.