Unfit to be Tied

One result of my Parkinson’s is that my brain has replaced my two hands with oven mitts.  Surprisingly the oven mitts are still adept at certain things like tying small flies (an eighth of an inch), wielding the mighty dvr remote, and typing this blog (although that is becoming more difficult).  Using the oven mitts to accomplish other tasks like dressing oneself is very problematic.  It is like trying to use those two flame retardant gloves to thread a small needle.

For most of my tenure teaching, I wore a tie.  I did this for three reasons which may be puzzling to non-teachers.  I took the time each morning to create a Windsor knot out of respect for my students, to reaffirm that I was their teacher and NOT a friend (they had friends who knew only as much as they did.  They needed adult perspectives), and as a legacy of my Villanova days.  My esteemed alma mater required that students wear jackets and ties to all classes and meals.  By the time we were sophomores we realized that financially we could not afford the thrice weekly visit to the Campus Cleaners (who cleaned us out, all right!), so we tended to use the same jacket and the same tie for all classes and all meals.  At the end of the day these accouterments find themselves on a mountain of clothing in the corner of the dorm room shared with my roommate who did his part in adding to the pile.

In my junior year developed the protest against the cafeteria food (to go along with the protests against the Vietnam War, civil rights abuses, the wearing of a bra, Lyndon Johnson’s abuse of beagles, and whatever decision Dow Chemical made).  Before I continue, I must pay homage to Villanova which taught me to think critically and to ruminate on how best to serve humanity.  I should also take this moment to remind people that the Villanova Men’s Basketball team won this year’s NCAA Championship. But excellent academic institution and home of champions Villanova was and is, it had a fault, a fault which affected growing teenagers who consumed vast amounts of sustenance (and non-sustenance) where they were most vulnerable.  Food.  Through investigation by the campus paper, The Villanovan, it was later discovered that there were suspicious dealings between the supplier and procurer of our daily bread (always stale daily bread, I might add) but all we students knew was that we were tired of our color coded meals.  The Yellow Meal sported corn, yellow grits, and yellow crusted mystery fish that had washed up on the Jersey shoreline, and a banana for desert or, if the bananas had thrice ripened, banana pudding with dark spots.   The Brown Meal featured brown rice and brown mystery meat (we noticed the lack of road kills along Lancaster Pike) and for dessert a brownie that was useful in stabilizing a dorm room desk by placing it under one leg.  I will spare you the details of the Green Meal.  Protest at Villanova, considering the era, was a relatively peaceful affair—no throwing of rocks or Molotov cocktails or cafeteria brownies.

Villanova was primarily a “Men’s College.”   The students of the nursing school were housed away from the main campus.  So our protest of the color coded meals consisted of several hundred males showing up for dinner with jackets and ties…….and nothing else.  Why should we dress for meals that included spaghetti sauce which looked and tasted suspiciously like the red stuff we plopped on hamburgers?  We may have been inspired by that noted jokester, Edgar Allan Poe, who as company leader at West Point on Gloves and Swords day, showed up on the parade ground leading his company wearing only gloves and a sword.  Unlike poor Edgar we were not thrown out for our hijinks.

Without any research to support me, I suspect that the quality of food on campuses has dramatically improved.  When my children were accepted to the colleges they applied to, we had fun visiting those schools to help them make their choices.  They had done the hard work of studying and learning to earn them the right to engage in “Shopping for Colleges.”  All the cafeterias sported a cleanliness and an ambience that tempted Polley and me to consider reservations.  And the menus!! The young, pretty college guides who led us on the campus tours pointed out the choices to accommodate every palate.  Chicken Kiev, Beef Wellington, Moldovian mamaliga (porridge), Shri Lanka kottu (stir fry), Mongolian buuz (steamed dumplings), tofu flavored a hundred ways, more varieties of rice than cereal choices in a modern supermarket. “And,” the young pretty college student guide added, “to pay for any meal all you have to do is swipe your identity card which you can also use in the campus store and your purchases will immediately be charged to your parents’ account.”  Much happy buzzing and smiling amongst the candidates as the parents looked up and stared at the ceiling anticipating bankruptcy.

I always wore a tie to the Shopping for Colleges escapades as I did in the classroom, but with less chance of mishap.  In the classroom the tie was a handicap.  In a strong wind it had a tendency to flop over my shoulder which I failed to notice as I conducted a lesson on The Great Gatsy, and there were several times when, while energetically directing a class, I straightened up abruptly after fishing for a piece of chalk in the top drawer of my desk only to realize painfully that my tie was firmly stuck in the closed drawer.  My students found this activity to be immensely comical as I reenacted the Ox Bow Incident.

In one class we actually had a discussion about ties.  It started with my referencing our lesson from the day before.  “Remember yesterday when we discussed Othello and Shakespeare’s reinforcement of the Great Chain of Being?”

Blank stares.

“Othello?  Great Chain of Being?”

Silence.

“Okay.  Who wrote Othello?”

The students turned and looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“All right. Who wrote William Shakespeare’s play Othello?”

Silence.  This class was not going to jump into the First Folios.

“Hey, Mr. Maltese, you wore that same tie last Tuesday.”

Non sequitur aside, I was curious that they remembered my pattern of clothing choice over a month’s span but completely forgot yesterday’s lesson.  I tried to steer the conversation into how much of our modern culture is indebted to cultures from centuries ago.  Our clothing, our customs, and why reading Othello was a good thing.

I started this diversion (always with an eye to returning to my main lesson) by sharing this historical footnote. Scholars agree that ties evolved from the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), when the French were impressed by the article of clothing worn by their Croatian mercenaries.  Croat became cravat and the cravat attracted the eye of that noted creator of fashion trends, Louis IV, the Sun King.  Ties serve no apparent purpose other than decoration.   I forget how the class discussion ended although I remember asking them to identify, based on character, what kind of tie would Othello wear and why.

Alas.  My fun-filled days of Tie Wearing are mostly at an end.  Fewer social occasions require them.  For example, I wore a tie during my first few airplane trips, but I gave that up about the time airlines decided peanuts was a main course and the width of each seat to be the width of a tie.

And the oven mitts make it much more difficult to flip one end of the tie under and over the other end.  I usually finish with a tie that extends only two inches below my collar. But I am a stubborn cuss.  I try again.  I stand in front of the mirror and order my paws to create an accouterment that would make Louis IV proud.  It is one of the few reasons I have to wear a tie.