Double Knots

She is a perfectly nice girl.  You can tell because she is wearing sneakers with plain white soles that would get along fine on a boat deck or a tennis court, and she’s done up the laces in double knots. 

Certain girls, the ones you should make an effort not to become - those girls never double-knot their laces. Those girls let their laces unravel and splinter into feathery strings that tangle among themselves and get dirty and wet and unrecognizable to the silver loop-holes they’ve traveled through and now can’t fit through anymore.

And the wrong foot.  The wrong foot can come down on a run-away splintered lace and tether her airborne foot to the ground just long enough to lurch that girl forward or off to the side.

And you. What if you are right there, beside her?



With those girls, anything can happen.