100 Days, 100 Ties

I wish I could come up with a nice little self-deprecating story that gets to the heart of the ‘fool me once’ expression. Of course, as I wrote that, I thought of one.

When I was a senior in college – my first senior year, at least, as I had two of them – I studied abroad for a school year in Montpellier, France. A couple weeks before my parents told me they were taking me and my brother Grant out to dinner. About ten minutes before we were supposed to leave, a bunch of my friends came over. After about 15 minutes of chit chat, and beers opened (I was 21), and snacks put out, I started telling people that they had to leave, as my parents were taking us to dinner. They all gave me some version of that loving, caring smile reserved only for friends who have lost their damn mind. “Um, Brooke…this is a surprise party.”

So, I wasn’t really fooled twice, but actually fooled 14 or 15 times on a constant basis over the course of 15 minutes. A couple of them had said “Surprise!” but there was never that collective roar emanating from a really large, hidden, drink-holding group of people, as would have happened at the surprise parties that you see on the TV. I guess I was just hungry for whatever dinner we were supposed to go to…

I wasn’t fooling or surprising anyone with my Monday TdJ choice (Tie No. 294, by the way), although some may call me fool for wearing paisley with this plaid shirt. Nah, I’m no fool, just willing to have a tie pop, I guess. This brown, blue and white strip from Carter Holmes is a Giddings Special, gleaned from the bag o’ ties given to me by Paul & Cease Giddings. CrapiPhone camera makes it look yellowish, too…hmm.

Monday was my last board meeting at the Chamber, and I managed to find a new Guy With Tie. David Kane is VP of Senior Living at Mather LifeWays, a retirement community corporation HQed in Evanston. Really like this blue, as you know. He spotted my tie clip, and showed me his cool cuff links as we had an accessories conversation.

Speaking of Davids, my roving photog (aka “Mom”) was at a funeral down in Louisiana (my great Aunt, “Tante Chick”, passed away last week) and used the opportunity to shoot some ties. My first cousins David and Mark Huval are here (Mark’s on the left). So funny…to this day, I still associate certain musicians to them, as they were (with some other cousins) my first influences on music. Mark had a bunch of Bruce Springsteen LPs, while David was a Rod Stewart fan. While I’m sure they listened to many other artists (oh yeah…Eddie Money and Boz Scaggs), these are just imprinted on my mind.

She also got another couple of cousins, with a different family connection: this pair are separated by a couple of generations. Roland Dugas and his grandson Jacques. Mom says that Jacques is already a nationally-ranked pole vaulter. Man, I can’t imagine what kind of strength that takes.

Thanks for reading…Brooke

This entry was posted on May 24, 2011 at 7:08 am and is filed under Guys With Ties, Tie du Jour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.