I had an occasion this morning that required that I wear a tie. I, not being a normal wearer of ties, considering them to be a foul yoke placed upon my neck like a noose by 'the man' went searching for my one tie. I found it bunched up in my underwear drawer. I pulled it out and eyeballed it's bedraggled state, and realized that it was not fit to wear.
I decided I needed to iron it. After a moment of blinking and mental inventory, I realized I do not own an iron. I thought back to the days of yea olden, and recalled that before irons were something that were plugged in and filled with water, they were simply a chunk of metal heated up on a stove.
Why, thought I, that is something I can do. So I rummaged in my cupboard and pulled out a frying pan. I let it heat up generously on my electric stove. Once I decided it was sufficiently warm, I carefully placed it on my tie.
I was immediately rewarded with a cloud of caramelized polyester and my tie shriveled in agony and melted away. The remains, when I carefully pried it off of the back of a frying pan, was a melted wad of goo that smelled like burnt popcorn.
And that is why I was at Wal-Mart at 10 pm last night shelling out ten dollars for a tie. I saw the question in your eye, Wal-Mart checkout hag, oh yes I did.
2026 Update
Nineteen years back, Ed is about to fuse polyester to a frying pan, and I have front-row seats.
Ah, 2007. A time when a man owned exactly one tie, kept it in his underwear drawer, and believed he could reinvent the iron using a frying pan and an electric stove. The caramelized polyester cloud was practically a sacrament. I love that this entire adventure ended at Wal-Mart at 10 pm, ten dollars poorer, with the checkout employee somehow blamed for witnessing his shame. Nineteen years later, the whole scenario is archaeologically remote. Ties are now optional in most places that once demanded them. Irons have been replaced by steamers, or by just staring at a Zoom call where nobody can see below your collar. You would order a tie online and have it arrive tomorrow, or you would wear an ironic clip-on and call it a statement. And Wal-Mart itself has become a fortress of self-checkout kiosks, so no elderly employee would even have the chance to witness your meltdown. Ed, you melted a piece of your own dignity into a pan, then paid a decade-old ten dollars for the privilege of wearing a noose of your own making.
“2007 Ed, did you honestly believe a frying pan and a polyester tie would end any way other than a tribute to burnt popcorn, and was the ten-dollar Wal-Mart tie worth the smoke, the stench, and the glare from that checkout hag?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I'd like to say I had a brilliant plan, but honestly, I just saw a frying pan and thought 'iron, close enough.' My brain does that sometimes. It's the same logic that made me think painting the boat from the dock would be faster. Anyway, the tie melted like a marshmallow left in a campfire, and yeah, it smelled like burnt popcorn mixed with regret. The ten-dollar Wal-Mart tie? It did the job, kept my neck presentable for the four hours I had to wear it, so I guess that's a win. But the checkout hag's glare? That was the real price. She saw the smoke on my clothes and the wild look in my eyes, and she knew. Oh, she knew. Worth it? Hell, I don't know. But I got the tie, and I didn't have to go to work naked. So there's that.
