The order has not been issued, but I think it’s inevitable. The plot began in late August when administrators and fellow teachers – traitors! — begin using the words “professional” and “tie” in the same sentence. I dread the e-mail that will make this suggestion a policy.
I loathe ties. I only wear them at weddings and funerals because they seem appropriate – the ties that bind, shuffling the mortal tie…or maybe it’s coil. I get choked up on such occasions anyway, so a tie doesn’t bother me as much. Otherwise, I’m a no-tie guy.
Part of my aversion to neckties is related to my anatomy. I have a short neck, you see. This is rather common among folks of Irish lineage, possibly due to centuries of being clubbed over the head by British soldiers. My heritage also makes me averse to noose-like objects around my throat.
But I digress. Back to neck shape. The classic, model-type neck is a vertical beauty that meets the jaw at a perpendicular angle. My neck, by contrast, makes a beeline for my chin at about a 60 degree angle – a bulky shortcut that is not designed to be constrained by a buttoned collar, much less a colorful noose.
I’ve also noticed that a tie is often accompanied by a superior air, as if a half-Windsor with a dimple is a distinctive achievement, or a Pratt knot a sign of Super Teacher. I resent the implication that I’m less professional than others because I refuse to submit to this dubious social custom.
A tie is not going to write my lesson plans, keep order in a class of teens or correct a pile of essays. A tie might come in handy if I run out of Kleenex and begin weeping over the essays, but beyond that, no.
Requiring male teachers to wear ties is vaguely sexist, too. And don’t tell me that it would be balanced by requiring skirts and dresses for women, because I’d rather wear a kilt than a tie. No, if men are required to wear ties, women should be required to wear bonnets – that’s a reasonable equivalent.
Ties are also – ahem – questionably shaped, making them inappropriate classroom attire. How can I reprimand girls for spaghetti straps if I’m wearing a phallic missile aimed at my genitals? I, for one, refuse to subject impressionable young people to such sartorial innuendo.
I’m not the first to notice this. German women actually have a festival during which they cut men’s ties with scissors, a symbolic castration. Symbolic or otherwise, I don’t want any frauleins approaching me with sly smiles and sharp objects.
Which brings us to safety. My primary concern is that a tie provides handy means of assault for those rough customers who often graduate to prison cells.
What if one of these behemoths decided to grab my power tie and tug me down the hall? Or dangle me from a fourth floor window?…Okay, my school doesn’t even have a second floor, but it could happen to my brethren at other facilities.
Dangers abound. I could get sucked into my printer. Dragged by a bus. Set aflame by a Bunsen burner when I borrow a dry erase marker from the chemistry teacher across the hall…Really, wearing a tie is just begging for a hospital stay.
I understand that principals and other administrators are required to wear ties, so I can almost forgive them. Some men wear a tie so often it almost looks normal on them, like those baggy shorts on basketball players. Still, I think it’s sad. Where some see style and elegance, I see a man beholden to a nonsensical norm.
Should I receive the dread order, I will not be heading to the men’s wear department. No, I will lead the rebel cause, climbing atop the school roof in an open-collared shirt and setting a flamboyant tie aflame while shouting, “Don’t tie me down!” and, “Set me loose, I refuse the noose!”
Either that or teach P.E. I haven’t decided.
I like the picture below (from my Brooks Range trip this summer), but can you edit so it’s more of a head and torso shot?