Recently, I've started going ice-skating again. This entails a 30-minute cycle to get to the ice rink and a half-hour bike ride back home again, with 60 minutes on the ice sandwiched in between.
I've had my own ice skates ever since I took lessons in London many years ago. One thing we learnt was that you have to lace up your boots so that they fit snuggly all the way up the ankle. You might get away with leaving the last pair of hooks at the top unused, but basically, once you've tightened the laces around the foot, you pull them tightly around the hooks of the bit of the boot that goes upwards. The main thing is that your boot grips around your leg.
When I'm on the ice, though, what do I see? I see teenagers who think that they can do up ice-skating boots the same way as they do their trainers: they don't lace their boots at all. They sort of wind them round the bottom of the ankle, not using the hooks at all. And then they wonder why they wobble so much, why their feet are at an angle to the ice instead of being upright.
When I see teenagers with badly laced boots, I want to go up to them and tell them what to do so that they'll feel more secure on the ice, but then I restrain myself as I've been told I shouldn't "poke my nose into other people's lives" and I let them get on with it. But I do feel sorry for them. If only they could figure out for themselves that those long laces and the hooks on the boots are actually there for a purpose and aren't an optional accessory.
This is how boots shouldn't and should look like:
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