A Brief Thing: Double Knot

It would be lovely to say, "there" and point at a well-designed timeline of my life, "right there. That's when all of this started." Unfortunately, I'm comfortable with the knowledge that no such "there" exists for me (or anyone really).

Wading through my week, I was shuffling through a handful of events to briefly blog about, and I surprised myself as I was tying my shoes. Maybe one day I'll have the right combination of health insurance and a weakened self-reliance as to have a professional pick through the horrendous mess of neuroses, fears, quirks, and goals that have accompanied me like freckles and moles through my life. Until then, I have moments like I did this week, tying my shoe. Let's close our eyes and pretend that my well-designed timeline is in front of us. Let's yank at it and pull ourselves back to the mid-nineties when I was a preschooler with the best brown bowl-cut a boy could ask for. 

I learned to tie my shoes when I was four, and although I cannot place a memory, hear her speaking in my mind, it is by no means a stretch to conjure one up; my mother taught me how to tie my shoes, and she told me to double knot them. This seems innocent. She didn't want her poor baby to be running around (carefully. To put it nicely, I was a very careful child. I wouldn't ride the camels at the zoo because they smelled bad) with shoes that had fiendishly untied themselves. Maybe she told me this, or maybe she had just double knotted my shoes so frequently that I mimicked this when I learned how to make bunny ears, go around, and through the hole to make the perfect knot. 

We can release our grips on the timeline. Smooth it out, and we're back. Somehow I had become an adult and not noticed that having shoes double knotted is peculiar. At least, this is what I've been told, and I'm hard pressed to find any counter-examples. I just shrugged and continued to have shoes that never came untied.

This is important. 

I can't have my shoes coming untied whenever they please. 

THE HORROR.  

As if puberty weren't already a sloppy anxious nightmare, my instincts (psychotic disorders) instructed me to double knot my shoes. Every time I pulled that second knot tight I was compressing my nervous system into an even tighter coil ready to spring forth with disaster. Don't worry, I self-prescribed a dose of overeating to calm my nerves. Oh yes, fat, gay, anxious, nerdy--I was a lovely teenager.

Imagine my surprise this week, sitting on my bed before class looking down on two single knots. Perhaps it's because I bought new shoes with laces just shy of being long enough to double knot. Maybe I was in a hurry once too many times. Or, there's a chance that I'm doing something right. 

The only certainty is that my shoes have already come untied several times this week and

I'm still alive.