Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 71 Gender: Male Posts: 11,897
10 Jan 2024, 5:46 pm
Yes. Not sure why. That's the way I was originally taught, then I noticed a kid at school tied his laces another way, and I learned that. Dad didn't much like it, but I stuck to it for many years, then eventually found myself reverting to the bunny-ear method. I suspect it makes it easier to keep the ends of the laces of even length and to stop them trailing on the ground. There's probably some practical reason like that behind the change.
Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 71 Gender: Male Posts: 11,897
10 Jan 2024, 7:09 pm
^ They do seem to arrive at the same result in terms of how the laces ultimately go around each other, though I had to prove it to myself just now, because I seem to remember as a child I found that the rabbit method was easier to untie because pulling on either of the free ends would immediately work, while with the non-rabbit method, only one of the free ends worked. But I can't reproduce that now. Maybe I was just using different amounts of force back then when I tied laces? I remember later on when I reverted to the rabbit method that I did so because it was easier to get an even, symmetrical result with regard to the relative lengths of the free ends.
I suspect the bunny-ear method was easier for me to learn because I liked rabbits. I've heard that learning is an emotionally-driven process like that. Yet strangely enough as an adult I tend to find such "French without tears" eye candy and buzzy stuff a distraction, and I just want the cold, raw information delivered as simply and clearly as possible. Brains must change as they grow older, yet a lot of teaching aimed at adults contains such childlike features, so maybe my brain developed differently to an NT brain.
Joined: 1 Jan 2006 Gender: Male Posts: 710 Location: Somewhere west of where you are
10 Jan 2024, 7:44 pm
I've done it that way since I was 4 when my mother wouldn't let me go outside one day. I though it was because she didn't want to do it, and figured it out on my own. She still wouldn't let me go out. Later on I figured out the other way to do it as a learning exercise, then went back to the original way. Must be an Asperger's thing - when they did skipping and galloping in school I could never do both - once I learned one I could never go back to the other, and other patterns have been that way.
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Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 71 Gender: Male Posts: 11,897
21 Jan 2024, 11:23 am
I have trouble getting the right compromise between so tight that I can't untie them and so slack that they come undone by themselves. And I once was gullible enough to buy a pair of horrible "everlasting" laces. They were made of some weird plastic - they probably were quite durable, but also stiff and slippery, so no matter how tightly I tied them, they'd come undone.
I also used to have a problem getting the overall tightness right - i.e. the tightness of the entire shoe. With some shoes there doesn't seem to be a Goldilocks zone where the shoe fits firmly, so they either feel like they're going to fall off or they feel like they're cutting off my circulation. And with "cheap" moccasins, if I make them tight enough to stay on, the laces cut into my feet. They get away with selling rubbish and the design flaws often take a while to identify. And shoe shops can turn awkward towards customers returning shoes that they've been wearing for a week or two.
You'd think that since the human race has been making and testing shoes for thousands of years, they'd be perfect by now, but it's not so.
Joined: 4 May 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 27,601 Location: was Louisiana but now Vermont in capitalistic military dictatorship called USA
21 Jan 2024, 4:43 pm
As a kid I wished there were self-lacing shoes like in the movie Back To The Future 2 so I wouldn't have to deal with tying or that my schools uniform policies would have allowed(or made an exception) for me to wear velcro shoes. I think some companies have made self-lacing shoes but I doubt those would qualify as dress shoes like loafers. I guess it won't make a difference for me ever since I graduated since I doubt I could ever do a business type job that requires dress shoes. The three jobs I've had were manual labor minimum-wage things so their dress-codes just required shoes, at most no open toe shoes. Self-lacing shoes might be a kewl option for some readers if the shoes are allowed & affordable.
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Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 71 Gender: Male Posts: 11,897
21 Jan 2024, 10:00 pm
nick007 wrote:
As a kid I wished there were self-lacing shoes like in the movie Back To The Future 2 so I wouldn't have to deal with tying or that my schools uniform policies would have allowed(or made an exception) for me to wear velcro shoes. I think some companies have made self-lacing shoes but I doubt those would qualify as dress shoes like loafers. I guess it won't make a difference for me ever since I graduated since I doubt I could ever do a business type job that requires dress shoes. The three jobs I've had were manual labor minimum-wage things so their dress-codes just required shoes, at most no open toe shoes. Self-lacing shoes might be a kewl option for some readers if the shoes are allowed & affordable.
I'd be interested in a lower-tech version of that. Maybe a thumbwheel on top of the shoe, turn clockwise to tighten the laces, anticlockwise to slacken, and a lever to lock and unlock. I would think the lace would have to be slippery for the idea to work, because with conventional laces even if you untie them, they don't immediately slacken enough to get the shoe off. Marty's motor-driven version strikes me as more complicated, wasteful, and vulnerable to failure than is necessary. I've never tried those velcro things. Something about them kind of puts me off for reasons I don't fully understand, though if I were to try them I might take to them. Memo to self: go to a shoe shop and try on a pair of shoes with velcro ties.
As for dress codes, I've never approved of those, and with one or two exceptions based on demonstrable practical justification, I would ban them if I had the power to do so.
Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 71 Gender: Male Posts: 11,897
22 Jan 2024, 11:29 am
^ Oh yes, that extra knot is important IMO. I haven't left that out of my procedure for many decades. As well as helping to make sure the laces don't come undone, it shortens the straggling ends.
The shops never sell the perfect length of laces, they're either too long or too short. I've been known to buy them too long, cut them to my ideal size, and put a bit of shrink-fit plastic tubing over the cut end so that it's still easy to put through the lace hole and so that it doesn't fray with use. It looks a little bit odd but you'd need very good eyesight to notice, as long as you match the lace colour with the tubing colour. I suppose you could start a new trend by choosing wildly different colours for tubing and laces. There's a lot more to lacing shoes than meets the eye.
Joined: 1 Jun 2014 Gender: Male Posts: 82,555 Location: United Kingdom
23 Jan 2024, 6:27 pm
I've always used the 'bunny ears' method, though I'd never heard that phrase before I saw this thread. I've experienced periods when the laces seemed to come undone, but it's generally proved to be a reliable method. I'm not aware of any other way of tying shoelaces.
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Joined: 27 Oct 2014 Age: 39 Gender: Non-binary Posts: 28,829 Location: Right over your left shoulder
23 Jan 2024, 6:33 pm
ToughDiamond wrote:
It looks a little bit odd but you'd need very good eyesight to notice, as long as you match the lace colour with the tubing colour. I suppose you could start a new trend by choosing wildly different colours for tubing and laces. There's a lot more to lacing shoes than meets the eye.
Pretty sure having the tubing clash with the laces would be my default.
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