Yesterday after church, I ran into two ladies who were
admiring the lovely and festive red and green dress a little girl was
wearing. One of them mentioned that when
her daughters were little, it was my mother who had taught her how to tie the
perfect bow at the back of a party dress.
I can believe this, but I also found it amusing, as I had not learned to
tie the perfect bow from my own mother.
To be fair, learning to tie any bow was such trauma for me,
that my mother was probably happy I could tie something functional and didn’t
worry about appearance. Learning to tie
ones own shoes was a huge deal in my kindergarten class. As soon as we could demonstrate our ability
to tie our shoes, we were honored with a bow pinned to our blouse for the day
to let everyone know of our achievement.
I was the youngest person in my class.
I actually was too young to start school, but I was such a pain at home,
that my mother took me to school at the age of 4 years and 4 months and begged
them to take me. Although my brain was
clearly ready to be occupied by something other than telling my mother how to
run the household, my fine motor skills were more in line with my age and tying
a bow was quite beyond me. My mother
later said that I spent most of my kindergarten year bemoaning my inability to
tie a bow, and sometimes crying that I would never get to have a bow pinned to
my blouse. I was so ecstatic when I
finally came home sporting that bow, that I’m sure my mother didn’t care
whether my bows looked perfect.
Unfortunately, I didn’t learn the correct way to tie a bow
until I was eighteen, and the person who taught me wasn’t very kind about
it! After high school, I went into a 3-year
diploma nursing program. That would be
the old style of nursing education where one was a slave of the hospital. As we rotated through various specialty
areas, we spent time in the operating room.
One fateful day, I was the circulating nurse, and as such, it was my
duty to tie the bows at the back neck and waist of the doctor’s surgical gown. He entered the room with arms raised, having
scrubbed, slipped into the gown and turned his back to me to have the bows
tied. I had no sooner tied the bow at
his neckline than he began to berate me.
“What is the matter with you? Have you no idea how to tie a bow? Don’t you know the bow is supposed to end up cross-wise….not
up and down? Do you want it to tickle my
neck all during the surgery? Look at
your own shoes! You tie your own shoes
the same stupid way!”
I looked down at my feet.
Sure enough, the loops on the bows ran parallel to the length of my feet,
not from left to right. I wondered how I
could have gone all those years oblivious to this huge faux pas. I obviously could not correct my shoes then,
but I did correct the bow at the doctor’s neckline following his
instructions. When I got back to my dorm
room, I experimented with tying my shoes, and discovered there really was a
difference in the results depending on which end of the lace was used for the
first loop and which was wrapped around.
Imagine that!!
Since I didn’t get married and have daughters until after
nursing school and college, I had perfected my bow tying before I had to use it
for special occasion dresses. My
daughters were saved the embarrassment of an inept mother. Lucky for them, I ran into that cranky doctor. Shoes often have Velcro now, but I’ve never
seen it on a party dress.
