My shoe philosophy has done a full lap. It started where everyone’s starts — slip-ons and Velcro, because I couldn’t tie laces yet — and it has now, decades later, returned to that exact spot. Different shoes. Same logic. The toddler was right.
For most of my adult life I was a laces guy. Tying your shoes was just what you did. Living in the city helped — you put your shoes on in the morning, you left for the day, and you didn’t think about them again until you got home. Maybe you went back out once for food (I was a Seamless-pickup person, not a delivery person — I needed the walk anyway). Either way, it was two shoe events a day, tops. Not enough friction to rethink anything.
I was firm about it indoors, too. Shoes off in the house, no exceptions. I won’t argue with people who do otherwise, but I will quietly judge them. You don’t know where your feet have been. You step in dog crap, you step in worse, and then you walk it onto your rug. I’m not interested.
The first crack in the system was travel. I had a pair of low Red Wing steel-toes I wore everywhere, and TSA made the math obvious — those boots and a security line were never going to be friends. So I started shifting my rotation toward shoes I could get on and off without sitting down. Not a big deal yet. Just a tilt.
The real break was rural life, magnified by COVID. We moved out of the city, we had the dog, we had the kids, and suddenly I was leaving the house twenty-three times a day. Walk Hobbes. Check the mail. Grab something from the truck. Take the trash out. Forget the thing in the truck, go back. Forget the other thing inside, go back. Each one of those trips, under the old laces regime, was a sit-down-on-the-bench shoe ceremony. Multiplied by twenty-three. Multiplied by every day.
And here’s the thing — I still wouldn’t walk through the house in outdoor shoes. We have dark floors that show every speck. A stone driveway that turns every pair of soles into a little gravel-distribution machine. So the shoes were coming off no matter what. The only question was how much of my life I was going to spend untying them.
So I started converting. Slowly. First it was slip-on muck boots for quick yard runs. Then slip-on rain boots. Then I broke down and bought slip-on work boots, because my lace-up waterproof pair — which I genuinely like — was the worst offender in the rotation. Then I started looking at my regular shoes and thinking, well, why not these too.
This is where I have to admit how far I’ve gone. I have converted basically every laced shoe I own to elastic laces. Some are the obvious stretchy kind. The newer ones I’ve been using look almost like flat racing laces, except they cinch with a little screw-down cylinder near the top, so the shoe still reads as a laced shoe to anyone glancing at it. Because I do still think shoes without laces look weird. I’m not ready to go fully slip-on aesthetically. I just want the function.
I’m in my fifties, and I want to be clear: this isn’t a dexterity thing. My fingers work. I can tie a knot. I have just decided, somewhere along the way, that I’d rather not tie one twenty-three times a day.
The shoe collection has narrowed to two criteria now. Waterproof, and either already a slip-on or convertible to one. That’s it. Everything else has been quietly retired or moved to the “occasional” shelf.
Which brings me back to the toddler. Toddlers get slip-ons and Velcro because they can’t tie laces yet. Then they learn to tie laces, and the parents — knowing exactly what’s coming — keep the Velcro pair in rotation anyway, because some mornings you just need to get out the door. I am now that parent. I am also that toddler. I just skipped the middle phase entirely.
If you need me, I’ll be in the entryway. Slipping on my shoes.
Even that's Odd 
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