Knots in usage.

　
Rhys was in his sixties when I met him.
He had spent 42 years of his life in prison. He was not bitter towards the law or the police or the government.

He blamed his mother.

She failed to teach me the one thing that would keep me out of prison he told me.
He then proceeded to tell his curious tale.
When I was seventeen. He said. I was sitting on the bridge near our home in Tiger Bay. I was unrealistically fishing in the filthy, polluted river. There were no fish save brown fish. I was killing time.
One of my shoes slipped off; I had not tied the laces. It slipped off and into and under the chemical soup of a river. I took off my other shoe and threw it after the first in dismay. I set out to walk barefoot home.
In the high street was a rack of shoes outside a shoeshop. I surreptitiously took two shoes which appeared to be about my size. I put them on and ran. Sadly the shoes were both designed for a left foot and were two sizes too small and I had not tied the laces.
The police caught me easily in those crippling handicaps. I got four years in borstall for theft.

I blamed my mother.

When I came out of that place I tried my hand at armed robbery; crime seemed the only option, and I had learned a lot from my cell mates.
In the bank that I held up, (armed with my granddads army revolver, no bullets, I’m a pacifist. Or a coward. Or both.), the knot tying my mask came undone and I was exposed to the cameras. I got 18 years for that.

I blamed my mother.

12 years later (good behaviour has it’s rewards) I tried my hand at kidnapping. The ropes I had bound the child with came undone; she escaped and led the police back to my bedsit. I got 20 for that.

I blamed my mother.

In prison that time I attempted to hang myself… the knot came undone. I broke my ankle on the cells concrete floor.

I blamed my mother.

I have gone straight now, I joined the scouts; I am their oldest recruit, they have taught me what mother didn’t all those years ago. They have righted her wrong. They have taught me the one thing that would have kept me out of institutions, the one thing that could have changed my life.

They have taught me to tie my own shoelaces.