cars and sneakers, a lament

This complaint may be just due to my advancing years, but I don't
think so. I think it's a real phenomenon.

We will all doubtless have learned by now that progress is not
necessarily improvement. I switched shoes today, and noticed
how hard it was to get into them, because the tongue only goes
partway down the shoe. The same is true of the shoes I had
been wearing. Those shoes are not all that easy to get into
even with good knees, and it's quite a struggle to get into them
at the moment, when I can't bend my legs easily.

A couple of years ago, I went out with a friend in his new car,
a sportsy job that he was really proud of. The seats were really
low in the car, so it took more than the usual just hopping in to
get into them. When we parked, my door was too close to the
curb to open, but since the convertible top was down, I figured
I'd just hop out over the door. That plan was complicated by
the fact that it was impossible to be balanced while standing in
the car, since the horizontal distance between the end of the
seat and the beginning of the dashboard was so small that
one couldn't stand up. I just about pantsed myself getting out
of the car.

Once upon a time, in the halcyon days of my youth, sneakers
had long tongues, so putting them on was effortless. The
designers of cars in those long-forgotten days included in their
calculations whether or not it would be possible for humans to
get in and out of the doors. Those days are gone, though, I
fear forever.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves" -- Wm. Pitt the Younger