Learn something new... every. damn. day.

I learned something new about Hubby this morning. 

You know how sometimes you can tell something is just not quite right, but you can't exactly tell what?

Like maybe you write a word and somehow it just doesn't look right?  Like weird.  Weird doesn't follow the "i before e, except after c" rule.  Ironic.  

Today I was sitting in the living room while Hubby was trying on his new running shoes. 

Me:  "Wait.  Hold on a sec."
Hubby:  "What?"
Me:  "Tie your shoe again."
Hubby:  "Huh?"
Me:  "Just do it.  Tie it in a bow again."
Hubby, with a nervous smile, while re-tying his shoe:  "Why?!"
Me, laughing:  "Oh my god, Honey, what are you doing?"
Hubby, panicked:  "What do you mean?!"

I don't know how ten years could go by (almost 20 if you count childhood) without me knowing that Hubby ties his shoes, um, wrong. 

Ok, not wrong, I guess, but differently.  And certainly with less efficiency.

Me:  "Show me again." 

So, he picked up one lace in each hand and tied the first knot.  Then he dropped the left-hand lace, and used his left hand to pull the right-hand lace into a loop.  He just dropped it. 

This is the point of his shoe-tying process that I later realized was what looked not quite right... the point at which I thought "Hmm, what's he doing?  Why does that look odd?" 

Then he finished his bow. 

Hubby, laughing:  "There.  What's wrong with that?"
Me, laughing harder:  "Oh, Honey.  Here.  Let me show you."

So, I picked up one lace in each hand and tied the first knot.  What I didn't do was drop either of the laces.  I used my left middle finger to reach across to the right-hand lace, and make the loop, then pinched the right-hand loop between my right finger and thumb.  Then I wrapped and tucked.  Et voila.  

Hubby:  "What do you mean?!"
Me:  "Sorry, Honey."
Hubby, with frantic laughter: "Why don't I know how to tie my shoes?!  How long have I been doing this?!  Twenty, twenty-five years?"
Me, laughing hysterically:  "It's ok Honey."
Hubby, laughing and yelling:  "Show me again!"

And so I did.  Over and over.  And we searched YouTube videos on "the best way to tie your shoe".  And we dissected every under-hand vs over-hand, every tuck vs pull, every criss vs cross.  And we talked about how perhaps I'll be the one to teach our future children shoe-tying technique.  

But the more videos we watched, the more obvious it was that re-training a 26/27-year-old brain is next to impossible.  Old dog, new tricks, and all that. 

For me it's a ponytail.  I can only put my hair into a ponytail if the hair elastic starts on my right wrist.  Any other method and my hair ends up looking like a dog-chewed Barbie head. 

As for Hubby, he may be a guitar god, but a lace genius he is not. 

In any case, we're going to tie our shoes like this from now on:

_