Good Luck Tie

My neighbor Alec gave me this tie. It happened like this:

Me: I like your tie

Alec: Why’s that?

Me: Because it’s yellow. I’ve been looking for a yellow tie. I even went to the thrift store yesterday and didn’t find one.

Alec: Well, I’ll give you mine.

So he did. Then he said, “If you make less than the median salary in your sales job, you have to give it back to me. But if you make more, you can keep it.”

Alec is good at motivation like that. Before I left for my PhD program in linguistics (which I withdrew from a year later), and I was wavering about whether it was the right decision or not, Alec told me, “You’ve gotta go! If you don’t, you’ll always wonder, ‘What if?’”

I would have gone without Alec’s encouragement, but he made me feel better about my decision.