GRANTED it was a long, long time ago. Still and all, back when this correspondent was in first class (now known as year one) our teacher decided all we students had to learn to tie shoelaces.
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Her logic was sound. She was spending way too much time tying untied laces.
She warned that untied shoelaces were potentially dangerous as they could cause we youngsters to trip over. We went to a Catholic school, so really there were far more potentially dangerous things we had to worry about, but that's a subject for another time.
Anyway we students were given a week to learn to tie up our shoes in the prescribed manner before a competition would be held, where we would showcase our new life skill.
This correspondent didn't podium in the Shoelace Tie Showdown (STS), however, we turned in a respectable effort, finishing about midfield after recovering from a slow start.
"You did well son,'' mum said when we relayed the news later that afternoon. Mum said that pretty regularly, even when we didn't do that particularly well, but let's not talk about HSC results here.
Many years have passed and many shoelaces have been tied since that life changing day. However, we have some bad news to report. We think we may have tied a shoelace for the last time.
For old age has started to take a dreadful toll. We've developed a Painful Back Condition (PBC) and one of the pitfalls is that we can no longer bend over and tie our shoelaces. Why, it's a big enough task just putting on socks.
We sought advice on the Painful Back Condition (PBC) from the usual impeccable sources and all our drinking mates agreed it would probably be a good idea to see a doctor or physio or faith healer or someone. So we did.
The prognosis was dire.
"No wonder you have a bad back,'' the doctor wailed.
"You've been carrying that newspaper single handedly for the past 40 years. Really, it's a wonder you're not crippled,'' the doctor didn't say at all.
However, she did outline a few things that would now be difficult to impossible - tying shoelaces and having wild sex romps with supermodels being just two. So we're going to miss tying shoelaces.
We've dug deep into our wardrobe and unearthed a pair of slip-on shoes we thought we'd discarded back in the 1990s. We now wear these to most functions, both casual and formal.
However, in an act of defiance we're still wearing our shoes-with-laces. We just don't tie them up. True. this could be labelled foolhardy, but this is a risk worth taking. Mainly because we don't want the expense of buying new laceless shoes. Unless we get a pay rise. Yeah, like that's going to happen.
