My Dad the Two Year Old Too

Just recently, my dear brother posted a funny story on our dad trying to figure out an electronic key card.  His brilliant imagery (I'm not being sarcastic, it was really good!) of talking to a young child through a locked bathroom door was spot-on when explaining or showing our father some new technology.  Usually, it's something that we can forgive our pre-baby boomer parents for not being generationally savvy: a new remote, switching to a browser for reading email as opposed to Outlook Express or Eudora, you know, new stuff.  Well, not to be outdone by my brother ("Turn it first, turn it first!"), take a look at this new technology my dad had trouble adjusting:

 

Deck Shoes, the bane of my father's existence.

 

Well, what was the problem?  My dad had owned these shoes for at least a couple of years.  He never seemed to have any trouble wearing them or walking in them.  Had they just become damaged?  Was something loose and my dad needed my opinion on whether it could be fixed or whether it would be cheaper just to buy new shoes?  No.  My dad's secret shame.  The laces were uneven and he could not figure out how to loosen them to balance them out.

Yes, shocking.  I still reel at the memory and this was only three days ago.  And the laces weren't just a little uneven, one side was 8 inches longer than the other.  After looking at him for a few seconds to make sure he was being serious, he was still looking at me with the same face he always gives me when he's been trying to plug in the printer for 3 hours.  The "I'm stuck and you probably can't figure it out, but I want to ask you before I call tech support and waste 3 hours of Sanjay's time in Mumbai" look.

Of course, it's usually just turning on the switch that fixes everything, or clicking on the right button, or whatever, but I had to go through the ritual.  You know the ritual.  The 20 questions ritual.  I asked my dad if he had ever tried loosening one side of the laces and pulling the slack through the other holes, you know, what you're supposed to do.  He said he never found a way to loosen the lace and the lady at the shop never put it in right, and they never fixed it at the shoe shine place.  All part of the ritual.  I ask the questions that supposedly leads the other person to a point where he had never tried something before, the dawning of understanding hits, and the mistake never repeats.  My dad has his own ritual.  He blames everybody else, while not answering your first question, and finally admits that, no, he had never tried that before, usually five minutes later.  Trying to save face, but losing even more because all he had to say was no in the first place, and then he doesn't look like some poor fool with the mayor's hat on by mistake.  So, what had my father never tried to do with the laces of his deck shoes?  Let me point it out to you:

 

The laces of a deck shoe only look simple, but it's really like a belt.

 

Where my finger is pointing is where the laces come out near the shoe's tongue and wrap around the ankle of the shoe before coming back up to the tongue again.  This way deck shoes don't fly off your feet if you get swept by a wave coming over the prow of your sail boat.  Well, when's the last time you had to worry about that wearing your topsiders?  But that's how they're designed.  All my dad had to do was wonder, "This looks like part of the lace, what happens if I yank on that thing?"  All I have to do is wonder, "Why'd he wait two years until we were in a hotel room in Las Vegas to ask me?"  I've just put the lie to that commercial campaign: what happens in Vegas, gets posted on the internet, usually with pictures and downloadable video.

So, I adjusted Dad's shoelaces while he looked on, very much like a toddler looking on an adult's hands as he magically ties a necktie or laces up boots, which we all know are way harder than regular shoes.  Later on, there was the double knot incident in the middle of the sidewalk, but my dad was able to figure that out on his own.