When I first showed up at Microsoft for an interview, I had driven literally straight from college. That explains, I think, the naiveté evident in my next sentence. I was wearing a suit.
The interview went well, and as my sweatpants-clad future boss walked me out of the building, she flicked her fingertips at what a college student thinks is a power tie. "And that's the last time you'll wear one of those," she said.
She was wrong, of course. In the intervening decades, four social occasions have required that I wear a tie, and I assure you that I bitched incessantly through each event. Such is the spoiled life of someone in the tech industry. I whine about having to wear pants.
This morning, I slip on tie #5. As I wondered where my ties are, I also wondered if I could possibly remember how to tie one. And there they were in the back of my closet, covered with a layer of crypt dust, relics of low-budget early-90s fashion. And on the end was the last tie I wore, a plain red one, still in its knot from 13 years ago.
Thank god. I have no recollection of deciding to leave the knot, but I thanked my younger self for his foresight.