Hello, everyone! This story has been has been sitting around in my head as a barely formed idea for a little while now, and it seemed as good a time as any to finally get it down on paper. Hope you enjoy! ~Lou

Rating: K

Genre: Is fluff a legitimate category?

Summery: A patient teacher, a tedious lesson, and an unconvinced student; one of the many little moments between the youngest brother and the oldest. Wee Tracy Story.

Shoelaces

Little Alan huffed out a sigh, a pout on his face. "Scotty, why do I gotta learn this? I could just get shoes with straps on them."

The six year-old sat on the floor across from his older brother, Alan's untied sneakers on the floor across from them, the laces trailing on the floor.

"Uh," Scott faltered a bit. There really wasn't a very good reason not to wear straps, was there? "Well, because, Alan, learning to tie knots is a… critical life skill. Just ask Gordon."

"Gordy wears sandals everywhere, Scott." Alan said crossing his arms. And with his head tilted just that way he was a perfect imitation of John when he didn't believe something. Gosh, their baby brother was growing up quick.

"True." Scott said. "But Gordon likes sailboats, and you need to know knots if you want to know sailboats."

Alan slid forward across the floor, reaching out with his toe to kick his sneaker around, a six year-old once more. "But I don't wanna know sailboats, Scotty. So I can just stick with straps."

Scott shook his head as he watched his little brother pick up one of his shoes and proceed to crush a potato chip he'd found on the floor, Alan selling the performance with terrified potato chip screams.

Scott had taught nearly all of his brothers to tie their shoes, with the exception of John, who'd been a classmate rather than a student, and never before had Scott had so much trouble convincing a little brother to actually want to learn.

Virgil and Gordon had seemed to see it as some sort of big boy right of passage, to have tie-up shoes and not need an older brother to do up the laces. But Alan was quite content with his straps, and when shoes with laces had been purchased for him he'd seen them as something of a chore at best.

What the kid needed was some incentive to learn, some kind of reward. Scott and John had been satisfied with stickers at that age, and Virgil a pack of crayons. Gordon had driven the hardest bargain with a goldfish, but nothing of that sort worked with Alan. He was quite satisfied with his imagination and someone to play with, that was about all that was important in the world, to his little boy way of thinking.

Scott almost gasped out loud when the obvious answer hit him, and it would be decidedly less work than a goldfish too. "You know, Allie, if you learned how to tie, you'd have the skills of a sailor, just think how impressed Gordon would be!"

The potato chip crushing stopped. This was a rare opportunity. It wasn't often that Alan, the littlest of the Tracy's, impressed his big brothers.

Alan brought the shoe down on the potato chips again, but Scott knew his heart really wasn't in it; there were no chip screams this time, and Scott, knowing his baby brother so well, remained quiet while Alan mulled it over.

Sure enough, not thirty seconds later, Alan stopped pulverizing the potato chip, for good this time, and climbed into his brother's lap like he'd done the last time Scott had tried to teach him.

Smiling, Scott took Alan's shoe and placed it in his baby brother's lap. "Do you remember the rhyme I taught you last time?"

Alan nodded, blond hair bobbing against Scott's chest, and began to chant the words as Scott's fingers slowly worked through the steps. "Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree…"

Alan was tying his shoes by the end of the afternoon. And, yes, Gordon was very impressed.