Sometime between Josiah’s and Laura’s wedding and my interviews in Glasgow, the red silk tie that Margaret gave me several years ago developed a very peculiar problem. The once-solid red tie has grown dull diagonal stripes; the tie looks as bright as ever in certain parts, and a muted murky red in others. The diagonal stripes don’t align with any external point of contact. It can’t be that, for instance, I bumped against a diagonally-muddy-striped wall. They aren’t congruent with any physical stressor they’ve encountered; it won’t work to imagine that the tie was folded or squeezed in a certain way to produce these regular diagonal stripes. I’m quite prepared shrug and say, “Oh, well, so much for that tie.” I just hate to give up trying to figure out what on earth happened.
Have you tried adjusting your tie’s vertical hold?
Mystery solved. It has always looked like this. It’s supposed to look like this. It looked just like this when I bought it for him. AKMA just never spent much time looking at the tie in adequate light. If only all puzzles were so easily solved!
Love the titular Talking Heads allusion though. Greetings from Virgil, Texas.