My Favorite Tie

My favorite thing about Sunday
is picking out a tie for church.
I have just under ninety of them.
A purple one with Aztec warriors on it.
One that’s got blue and white stripes
that I bought at a yard sale in California.
A yellow one from my cousin’s wedding.
Some of my older ones have cartoon characters on them.
Scooby Doo, that cucumber from Veggie Tales.
I even have a black one with the red letters
AFI patched on it.
Of these eighty some odd ties,
I probably wear about ten.
But before I can make any sort of decision,
I have to look at every last one of them.

A little over two years ago
a girl sent me a package for my birthday.
The package was late because
she had forgotten when my birthday actually was.
But there were four ties in that box,
so I quickly forgave her.
Two of those ties were ugly.
The other two were brown.
One had a bunch of little red moose on it.
And the other had tan stripes.
This brown tie with tan stripes has been my favorite ever since.

My tie collection has become so big,
I had to get me one of those
electric tie-holder things
that only weirdoes have.
It’s actually pretty cool, because I can
push a button and watch as
red and blue and green and grey
and pink and purple and white
and brown and black and orange
ties go whizzing past me in a circular motion.
Sometimes choosing a tie is enough to make me dizzy.
It’s almost always enough to make me late.

So this girl,
the one that sent me the ties,
I loved her.
I was thinking marriage.
She loved me too, but
she was thinking Master’s Degree.
I told her to go; I wanted her to be happy.
So after a short-lived long-distance
relationship,
She moved to France to earn her piece of paper.
She’s in Ohio now, finishing up her Master’s there.
I called her last Saturday.
She was in a department store.
So glad I called.
She was picking out a Valentine’s Day present for her boyfriend,
and she didn’t have a clue what to get him.
I make a few suggestions.
A shirt—Out.
She just got him one for his birthday.
A CD?—Nope.
Movie?—Nah.
A ridiculous amount of heart shaped chocolate—Out.
He’s diabetic.
I suggest some sugar-free stuff.
Tell her to give him the sugar later.
She laughs.
Then she sees the ties.
She says he just got a new suit,
so that would be perfect.
We decide on a blue one, and she heads for the checkout.
On the way she tells me that
she’s never bought a tie for anyone but me.
I tell her to take it back, to buy him another shirt.
She laughs again, but this time
I’m not joking.
I want to know that I still have that part of her.
Just that one little part.
The part that buys ties.
She gets to the check stand and says she has to go.
Thanks for your help, she says. I love you. Goodbye.

The next morning, I watch as my ties go around and around.
They seem to fly right out of the closet, encircling me
in a world of insecurity.
I know which tie I want, but I can’t just pick it out.
So I wait for it to come around again and again and again.
Finally I reach out and grab the brown tie with the tan stripes.
As I slowly tie it around my neck,
I look in the mirror and I see that I am wearing
someone else’s favorite tie.