Tying your shoelaces.

You do it every day. You get up, stumble into the kitchen, make yourself a cup of coffee, get dressed and washed up, put on your shoes and you're off to work. Yet, in this simple succession of events, it is easy to forget the most important of all: Tying your shoelaces.

Indeed, where would you be without tying your shoelaces? Probably lying in a puddle of mud somewhere, that's where. The secret art of shoelace tying has been passed from father to son for centuries, yet noone really knows where it all began. Until now! Striving to provide you with groundbreaking information, our team of highly specialised archaeologists, anthropologists and carpenters has uncovered a surprisingly detailed history of shoelace tying.

It appears that the notion of shoelace tying first appeared on March 13th, 1848 when Johannes Speicherstufler, a well known Dutch slaver, after having had his breakfast which his numerous slaves brought to him, got out of bed and exclaimed, "Tie my shoelaces!". Unfortunately, at that time, shoelaces did not exist, and shoes were one-size-fits-all. Therefore, nobody knew how to tie them, resulting in the untimely death of 3,198 slaves in Speicherstufler's possession. Speicherstufler, after realising that he had eliminated his only source of revenue in a moment (or rather, a day) of anger, sold all his assets to ensure that he could go on living in the same way as before. Immediately after the sale, he bought everything back, because how was he going to live same as before if he didn't live same as before, duh.

This incident was promptly forgotten after the dogs ate all the slaves, and the notion of tying one's shoelaces was also, forgotten, until an Italian man, Tonino Camirtoni, spilled pasta on his shoes while eating, but instead of picking it up and eating it, as he usually would, he sat and stared in wonder at the new form of his shoes. He immediately proceeded to decorate his shoes with string, which made them infinitely prettier and, admittedly, a bit gay. After years and years of decoration, Camirtoni's son, John Smith (he wasn't really Camirtoni's son, his wife had made the beast with two backs with an English sailor, but Camirtoni was not aware of that) had the notion of actually implementing the string in the shoe, thus enabling fastening and unfastening.

It is not hard to imagine that soon after that shoelace tying would finally be implemented, but John Smith was not the brightest bulb in the shed. Indeed, he just left the shoelaces untied, which caused him to fall all over the place all day, but fascinated with his invention as he was, he did not mind. It was not until Smith got married, that his wife, Patricia Provolone, had the idea to tie John's shoelaces so that he would stop falling around and actually get some work done around the house.

Patricia's knot was crude and weak at first, requiring days to be untied by the wearer but coming apart only minutes after tying (you might have seen this knot design nowadays in prank stores), but she eventually perfected the technique, reaching what was known as the "Single-feathered papillon", the ancestor of today's "Normal papillon".

The person who perfected Patricia's original design was, coincidentally. her great-great-great grandson, Angus McAdams (yes, I know that's a Scottish name, this is a blog, what did you expect, continuity?). McAdams was frustrated by the "Single-feathered papillon", which he could never tie, so he reckoned he would double his odds and go with the "Normal papillon". His exhilaration was great when he found that he could easily tie the new knot, and he allegedly screamed to his wife "Eh, Annie, get yer stinken arse over 'ere", to which she affectionately replied "Go ta 'ell, ya lazy bum". McAdams spread the design far and wide, and this is how it came to pass that everyone in the world now ties their shoelaces the same way.