Details, Devil in

This may come as a shock, but I'm not perfect and have, in fact, plenty of room for improvement. A host of people, some more kindly than others, have pointed out a number of my failings, and sometimes I choose to do something about it and sometimes I don't.

I have quirks, habits, and indiosyncrasies that drive some people nuts. I sometimes care a lot about these things and keep doing them because of that effect, or some other reason. It may be something as simple as "I like it," or it may be more involved. For a spell, I would write notes on the back of my hand, and I would do this when employed as a Director and it was thought that I should use my Palm for that purpose. No one else had a Palm back then, and I imagine they wondered why I did that.

I did it because I liked people who wrote on their hands. I thought it unassuming.

When I first met my future ex-wife I owned one pair of shoes. I was working in an office then, as I always have, and they were a pair of black steel-toed work shoes. I wanted, but didn't get, the model with the ripple sole for work on concrete. By the time she met me I'd had them for a good time, had never polished them, and they looked like a pair of work boots should look.
It didn't even require a special event, like a birthday, for her to give me a few gifts. I liked that about her, since I was constantly buying gifts for no reason, too. She bought me some clothes, a sweater and some polo shirt, and with them a pair of white loafers.
As our relationship and my sartorial knowledge increased, she would frown at my shoelaces, which I'd never bothered to keep straight in my life. She'd wince looking at the twisted ribbons running between my eyelets, and eventually told me that I had to keep my laces straight.
It had never occurred to me--honestly!--that anyone would go through the bother of straightening their shoe laces. I'd never noticed, not conciously, if anyone's laces were neat, but it was a lesson I learned. The other lesson about shoelaces I may write about another day, but it's an emotional one for me.

Yesterday I felt I should look good, or, at least more presentable than I usually do. I slipped into my green Chucks and noticed the shoelaces were a disaster. Old, streaked, and twisted like a licorice. I loved it.