Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
Today I put on a tie for the first time in about 15 years. There was no special occasion but there was a reason. First a little background on me and ties and why it has been 15 years since I have worn one. Technically, I wore a tie for my wedding (which will be 10 years ago in a few weeks - but that was a clip on bow tie so I am not counting that as actually wearing a tie). It is not that I don't like ties nor that I think they are not worth wearing. Ties are very professional looking and they are not uncommon at my workplace. I was really paying attention today in the cafeteria on how many ties I saw. I would estimate about 5% of the men were wearing ties and another 5% or so were wearing suit jackets. By and large though most folks were just wearing long sleeve dress shirts. If I had to pinpoint a real reason why I don't wear ties it is probably because I don't own any shirts that "go" with ties. Until recently that is.
Last week I took my 5 year old daughter with me to shop at Kohl's for some long sleeve dress shirts. I really feel out of place at the office wearing short sleeves as they are in the minority (long sleeves being the majority). I have a real problem with the way dress shirts are sized. I mean, come on! Who uses the neck size as a measure for what the rest of your body is shaped like? Anyway, I need about a 16 1/2 neck and a 36/37 sleeve. Finding a 16 1/2 and 36/37 sized shirt is about as easy as finding a size 11 1/2 shoe (that is a story for another blog). At any rate, I did find some 17 and 17 1/2 shirts with the needed 36/37 sleeve and since they were on sale (80% off) I decided I could live with a slightly large neck hole.
This is where I was wrong. Once I got the shirts home (I bought 2) and took out the cardboard, plastic and pins and actually tried the shirts on, I discovered that the collars just did not look right with the top button left unbuttoned nor did it look right buttoned. It just needed something (like a tie perhaps). So yesterday the whole family headed back to Kohl's and as luck would have it we found a rack of ties that were also marked down 80%. I let the 5 year old pick out my ties and bought a few more shirts. Overall I bought 4 shirts, 4 ties and a belt for about $70 total.
And today I wore a tie for the first time in 15 years. One other thing I should note, as you may have guessed, I have not TIED a tie in 15 years either and my wife has NEVER tied a tie. So I had to allow a few more minutes of preparation time this morning for a few false starts. Anyway, below is a picture of me in a tie. If you don't like the tie, blame my 5 year old daughter (plus it only cost me $4).
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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