Last weekend my friend and I ran in the Run Lucky 5k race.

We didn’t make great time, but we did o.k.

That’s us near the finish line.

While we were there, the BoyChild and I went into the running store. I’d been there before buying shoes and stuff, but that day I was on a mission to find some shoe laces that he didn’t have to tie.

Among the BoyChild’s various problems are his fine motor skills. He CAN tie his shoes but he is painfully slow at it and doesn’t always do a good job of it so they don’t stay tied long. As a result, he never ties his shoes, walks around with them untied and ultimately we have to replace them because they become so torn up they look worse than they do when they are just untied.  This is a battle I had chosen not to fight and I bit my tongue every time I saw him shuffling around in his shoes looking like a street person.

The woman at the running store showed us a product called Yankz.  It’s a system whereby you don’t have to tie your shoes but can still tighten the shoe laces easily.   Among the BoyChild’s other problems are that he doesn’t like crowds.  And this place was crowded and busy.  The BoyChild and I left David to buy the new shoelaces while we skedaddled out of there.  After we met up with David again he said, “the girl offered to put them on Jacob’s shoes because it can be a little complicated.”  So back into the store we went and she started working on his shoes.  The BoyChild was obviously uncomfortable so I said, “can we move over there to get away from some of these crowds?” But instead she took us into the back of the store, where there were no people, but lots and lots of shoe boxes and proceeded to fix the BoyChild’s shoes.

I was so excited about this that I wrote to the Vice President of the Parent Student Group to tell her about them.  They are always asking us to let them know if we find something, or someone, or a program that might help our students so they can share the information with all the other parents.  She wrote me a lovely note telling me that they had had the same problem with their child who is at the BoyChild’s school, that she thought a lot of the kids have this same problem and thanked me for letting her know.

In the spirit of friendliness and happiness I sent a copy of my e-mail to the VP of the PST to the store where we purchased the shoes and thanked them for their employees lovely help and the recommendation of the lovely product.

Well by the middle of the week, there was a problem.  The BoyChild had managed to lose a part of the shoelace system that was integral to keeping them tied.  I sent Yankz an e-mail asking if it was possible to get that one small piece replaced.  I think I did this on Wednesday morning.

TODAY.  Friday.  Two days later.  I had a package in the mail from Yankz when I left my house to head to work.  It was another pair of  laces as well as the small piece we were missing.

I think I too will be wearing Yanks shoelaces on my running shoes because man I love GREAT customer service!

Full disclosure.  This was not a sponsored ad.  I did receive a free pair of Yankz shoelaces and the little triangle piece we lost but it is only because they have great customer service not because they promised to give them to me in exchange for a raving blog entry.