Chris 77

The Shoe-Lace Rule

As a child there were things you did and didn’t do. For example, if you were a boy you didn’t bring a designer beach bag to school. You also didn’t go over to the other side of the school if you didn’t belong there (we were divided in to two ‘bands’ and it was best to stay with people from your band or risk a thrashing). You also DID NOT do your shoe-laces up properly. This was the kiss of social death. Doing them up properly was exactly the same as going up to a bigger boy and saying “I’ll give you five pounds and you can smash my face in?”

Because of this everyone walked about with untied laces dragging on the floor. Don’t ask me why, but some law of cool said that walking about like this made you look ‘hard’. So that was what we all did. Until a new boy arrived one day, flaunting the shoe-laces rule in front of everyone–

We all stared at him as he walked down through the gates. Who was this maniac? People whispered. Who would dare do such a dangerous, moronic and downright stupid thing!?

But something happened, something unexpected. The boy went straight to a bigger boy and said “how do you like that then, it’s Velcro!”

Velcro? We had never heard of such a thing: that was when we all realized–his shoes had no laces–no laces and they still stayed on!

We had been imagining his neatly tied laces!

That was the day that Velcro arrived at our school. After that nobody had to worry about the shoe-lace rule ever again.