I used to be a bit of a twit. Still am, to a degree, the days that lack an embarrassing moment being few and far between, and my uncoordination planting a smile on the face of many a bored PE student. I digress.

Back in Year 7 when I was (as I ashamedly admit) a twelvie, a hipster, and firmly solid in my belief that I was, somehow, cool, I did plenty of weird things that made me look unique. By which I mean, they made me look uncoordinated and awkwardly confused with a facade of unwavering confidence that I never quite believed in.

These weird things included (but certainly did not peak at) the Shoelace Experiment.

You will have seen my red Converse in my header – my favourite shoes then, and terrible for my low arches now. As glamorous as they are, however, they are somewhat dated and the laces have become very stretched, resulting in their frequently becoming untied.

Which is why, in Year 7, at any particular moment throughout the day in which you happened upon little me, you would find me with at least one shoelace undone and trailing behind me, more often than not filthy and damp.

“I’m doing an experiment,” I would advise concerned observers, “to see whether or not I will actually trip on them. I haven’t so far, and I don’t plan to.”

This annoyed plenty of people, divisible into two groups: the first, those who worriedly told me, “Your shoelace is untied,” to which I would reply “I know,” undoubtedly irritating absolutely everyone; the second, the people who knew that I looked and was acting like an absolute twit and couldn’t really do anything to fix it.

I grew out of it eventually. My shoelaces are always done up nowadays; as it happens, loose shoes and filthy shoelaces are gross, for want of a better word. Oh, and my hypothesis was proven: I never did trip on my laces.