One of Life's Little Conveniences

Today I'd like to salute a tiny little innovation that we all take for granted: the little strip of fabric on the tongue of your sneakers that you put the laces through so the tongue doesn't get all bunched up in back. We didn't have them when I was growing up. (Of course, in those days we were so busy hauling firewood two miles—uphill both ways—that we didn't have time for sneakers anyhow.)

Comments

[Loren]

Oh, the dark days before the tongue-fabric-strip-thingy!! The tongue would gather to one side and make that painful ridge in your foot. It was the shoe equivalent of the wedgie!

[scott]

Wow, shoe wedgies solved by stabilizing fabric strips... Maybe the other kind of wedgies could be solved similarly? How would that work? The mind boggles.