As I stepped on my shoelace today getting out of the car and almost face-planted in front of my building, I thought to myself, "What's the deal with shoelaces?" I also thought to myself, "
I wonder if the Great DiMaggio ever had a bone spur?" but that's hardly relevant to this story.
In this day and age, I find shoelaces to be a perplexing appendix to modern footwear. In an era of
tear-away pants and
male bust support, shouldn't we ditch this dinosaur of shoe fastening technology and embrace a twenty or twenty-first century advancement? Personally, I think shoes should go the Velcro route. It's been around for over 50 years but hasn't caught on as a staple of the adult shoe. As a kid I had them and they were awesome. Allow me to enumerate the advantages:
- Simple action allows for quick shoe application/removal. No more of this knot-tying and untying nonsense.
- Simple action allows for on-the-fly adjustments, without relacing, retying, etc.
- Never have to worry about stepping on untied or overly long laces.
- Never have to buy new laces because the old ones frayed or got dirty from dragging in the mud.
- That awesome schzzzip sound!
To be fair, there are a couple of known disadvantages:
- Velcro straps sometimes accumulate fuzz (this could open the market for Velcro lint removers, though).
- Snipers/Ninjas must wear traditional laces, or not try to field-adjust their boots, for fear of giving away their position.
I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I say, down with laces! Embrace the straps! We could eliminate Shoelace Trippage (S.T.) in our lifetime!
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