Instead of TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) we have TAIT here in Jordan (Thank Allah It’s Thursday) with our strange (for me) work week ending on Thursday. I often have difficult Thursdays class-wise, with two classes after lunch, one in the last period from 3-3:45 pm, which luckily enough happens to be the section where all my rambunctious knuckleheads decided to conglomerate (they are incapable of virtually anything during this period). I’m always looking for things to try to get me through the day before I can crash for the weekend, and one of the things that has worked is Bow-tie Thursdays!

For those that haven’t been following the blog since the beginning, I decided early in the yearthat since bow-ties are such a novelty here, that I would become the bow-tie man. Soon after I started wearing them, I decided that it would be a nice treat at the end of the week – a bow-tie to get me through Thursday, perfect. And then some students began pestering me about the bow-tie, so we decided that we would start a bow-tie club and all wear bow-ties on Thursday.

I immediately tried to get the ball rolling (this was October) with the help of others at the school to try to get bow-ties with the school colors so they would count as dress code and be official. I sent off like 12 emails, people had the school had many meetings on my behalf, we looked at proposed designs and a few months later (ha) a sample came in. Unfortunately though, the sample was for a pre-tied, velcro stick bow-tie – the clip-on tie equivalent in the bow-tie world – bummer. When the suppliers came to school for a meeting, I offered up a few of my bow-ties as samples so they could see exactly what we wanted to order. But, apparently when they were unveiled at the meeting, the suppliers said something to the effect of “We have never seen something like before, we need to send it Indonesia.”

Now, I’m sure that’s not what they said, but that’s exactly what they did. They sent one of my bow-ties to Indonesia to figure out how to make them. The bow-tie I wore today for Bow-tie Thursday has been in Indonesia. I feel awful that this has been such a hassle for the great people in our school who have to deal with issues like this, but the bow-tie ball is rolling and aint nothing going to stop it now. We will get King’s Academy bow-ties, I will have a following that will wear them on Thursdays, and we will all find ways to help us get through those tough Thursdays…