Life is hard.
Tying your shoes shouldn’t be.
You’d think in this age of self-driving cars, virtual offices and household chore robots that someone, somewhere could design a shoelace that actually stays tied.
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Running/walking shoes are all the rage because they’re comfortable and functional. And unless they’re slip-ons or have a Velcro patch, they come with laces — laces that seem determined to come undone every 20 to 30 steps.
It’s maddening. And it’s happening across the brand spectrum: Merrell, New Balance, Eddie Bauer, Nike.
Granted, there are worse things than having to pause in the middle of your daily constitutional or dog walk or grocery visit to bend over, set down whatever you’re carrying and retie your shoes. But doing it again and again and again is annoying. Plus, isn’t there a fall factor?
The dilemma leaves you with options: double knot your laces like a second grader or, next time, opt for lace-less shoes.
At least I thought those were the only options. Until I posted my frustration to the one place where you can simultaneously find both solace and solutions.
Social media. I shared my rant with a photo and was instantly met with commiseration.
“It is so annoying! I have to double tie them every morning!”
“I’m with ya on this one.”
“So frustrating.”
Some people offered alternatives: “Try Velcro.” “Try slip-ons.” “Try elastic laces,” apparently available on Amazon.
I appreciated the suggestions but also wondered why I should have to a) double-knot or b) buy another product to make my shoes workable.
Several people pointed out that not only were shoelaces untieable, they were way too long, sometimes three times the length of the shoe.
“No one needs a bow that big,” one friend pointed out.
Amen.
But then, later that evening, Gary Stubits chimed in with an idea I hadn’t considered.
Could this be a user problem?
“You are tying your shoes wrong,” he said.
What?
This was a skill I thought I’d mastered in kindergarten. But apparently, the joke’s on me. And a whole lot of other people.
“The way you are doing it, they will never stay tied,” Stubits said. “Notice how the loops are parallel and not perpendicular across the shoe in your picture. The way to fix this is to reverse the way you start the first knot. It will take some practice but it will become habit and your shoes won’t come undone. I used to have the same problem until I accidentally found the solution online.”
The Oak Lawn native and Brother Rice High School alum said uncooperative shoelaces are “a huge problem.”
“I learned this (new technique) at 44 and have not had an issue the past 13 years,” he said. “It is so easy to diagnose and fix but if you don’t know, you don’t know.”
Stubits included a link to a story by Runner’s World magazine that offered an explanation of this amazingly simple, yet apparently internationally elusive hack.
And that is where I learned about the granny knot. I know, I bristled at the name too. Still, truth be told, I am a granny.
“If circumstances put you in the granny camp, you are doomed to looseness, stooping and retying. Crooked bows — sitting vertical from ankle to your toes — are the visual giveaway,” the article says.
Instead, the story states, if you want your laces to stay put, tie a reef knot.
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“Reef loops fall gracefully to the left and right sides of the shoe,” it states.
A reef knot will give you with a bow that is perpendicular to your shoe and will stay tied. There’s a graphic that explains this simple twist in technique.
I tried it. It works. I am forever changed.
So, of course, I had to share.
Frustrated by slippery laces, Stubits, a commercial real estate broker, said he was looking up a “fancy way to lace shoes to essentially turn them into slip-ons” when he stumbled across an article on the reef knot.
“What a revelation,” he said.
Shortly after this discovery, he was in an intensive investment real estate course when, one day, the teacher asked each student to stand up and share something they had recently learned.
“I got up and told everyone I learned how to tie my shoes,” he said.
“The whole class laughed loudly. I gave a short explanation on how to tell if your shoes are tied correctly,” he said.
He doesn’t know for certain if anyone benefitted from the information but he’s hopeful.
And I, for one, am grateful. Here’s to stepping lightly and not treading on laces.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.