Several years ago, I was reading the NYRB selections from Thoreau's journals. Somewhere well into it, he wrote of talking with a friend, and the two deciding th

Several years ago, I was reading the NYRB selections from Thoreau's journals. Somewhere well into it, he wrote of talking with a friend, and the two deciding that perhaps they were tying their shoes wrong. They switched the order of the first cross-over, and found the results much better. I tried it (age 50-something), and discovered that I no longer needed to double-knot my shoes.