Tie your shoes, Walter!

So when I was a kid, I couldn’t tie my shoes. A common misconception people have about me is that I’ve fixed this issue. I haven’t. Sure, I can tie my shoes, but I only know the bunny ear method. I’m not kidding, I’ve never learned to tie my shoes with a single knot like most people. My parents could never get me to understand, and I’d work myself up into quitting each and every time they tried. I hated it.

First grade came around and I had no method whatsoever of tying my shoes when they came undone. All my friends, classmates, kids that thought I was smart, they all could do it, but I couldn’t. And so if my shoes ever came undone, I’d deal with it rather than ask anyone to help tie them for me. I was too embarrassed.

One day at recess, I climbed up a playground fort and went to hide up high away from view. My shoes had come undone and I tried tying them. Didn’t work. I just sat there trying many different things, and then this kid named Keegan came up to me, and I immediately stood up.

Keegan was a rough kid. If every grade has that one kid with significant anger issues, he was that kid. He’d flipped desks over, thrown chairs across the room. For such a young kid, he carried in him the rage of Rome. And when he came up to me, I didn’t want to be caught in one of his bad moods. I didn’t want him saying anything about me being too stupid to even tie my shoes. I didn’t want him saying anything. But he did.

“You don’t know how to tie your shoes?”

I sighed. I knew what was coming.

Keegan had let me have it before. The year before in kindergarten, Keegan had asked if I wanted a knuckle sandwich, and I had no idea what it was so I said yes. And then he actually punched me. He had pushed me off a swing before, kicked me in the shins playing soccer, and even a week prior had thrown me to the ground over a game of basketball.

But instead, that day, he said:

“Here, I can help you.”

I had never known Keegan to be nice or gentle. Even when he said that, I thought he was about to punch me or grab one of my shoes and throw them down to the ground. But he didn’t.

He sat down with me. He untied one of his shoes, and he told me, “I don’t understand how everyone else ties their shoes. I tie mine with two loops.” And he showed me the bunny ear method, just like that. I got my shoe laces and made the two loops and then knotted them together. And then I did it again and again. And quickly I found myself, for the first time ever, smiling in his presence.

Over the course of a single recess, I went from not being able to tie my shoes to knowing a method that has helped me my entire life. I don’t know any other method, and I don’t think I want to at this point. That memory is just too special to me. That kid Keegan was one of my many bullies as a kid, but for 10 minutes he helped me with something that’s kept helping up to this very day.

I don’t think I ever saw Keegan again.