.  Hello, my name is Mike Murphy and my special object is this bow tie. I received this bow tie from a stranger that I only saw one time and never again during one of the worst summers of my life. I had recently come out as a transgender man in the big city of Pittsburgh, and I'd gone back to the smaller part of Pennsylvania where I was from. That move on my part was met with a lot of resistance from different people in my community and in general, people were not very accepting of this about me. I was very heavily discouraged from being out, and one of the only safe ish places that I could be out was at work. I was working at a gas station, a Wawa local to myself that had just opened that summer. And when I say it was a safe place to be out, I mean that my coworkers agreed not to rat me out to anyone else. They made me two name tags so that I could switch them from my dead name to Michael, the name that I ended up choosing. And that was a safety measure, right? To make an agreement that everybody knew what my dead name was and they would dead name me and misgender me in front of anyone I like, gave them a look about and that they would be affirming and call me Michael and he/him and such in front of anybody who seemed cool or any strangers. And it was very, even with that system in place and the support from work, it was just very, very stressful and difficult to be myself in a situation that I knew was not safe. And in a community where strangers would react in a lot of ways. Some people were cool about it, some people were really, really, really not cool about it. And that made interacting with anybody in a customer service role very stressful, particularly because to keep your job in customer service, you have to behave a certain kind of way to people. So I was not as outgoing or as friendly as I wanted to be, both because I was afraid and also because I didn't think people would see me the way that I saw myself. So one day I was at working the drink counter, making a smoothie for some guy, and when he came to pick it up, I saw that he was wearing this bow tie. And blue is my absolute favorite color and it has been for a very long time, and I was very struck by this piece. So I turned to him and I said, “Hey man, I love that bow tie, that’s fantastic.” And he said, turned around and said, "Hey bro, that's great. It's part of my uniform. I would just work at the retirement community down the road. I'm a server over there.”

 And I was like, “Oh, well that's cool.” And then he said, “Hey man, you know, if you like this bow tie, you can have it.” And I was like, “Whoa, first of all, gendering me correctly. Love that. Amazing. Second of all, I can't just take your like work attire from you, no matter how cool it looks. That's crazy.” And then like he just, he like took it off, he, he undid the little clasp and just like threw it down on the counter and was like, “There you go. Have a great day, man.” And then he took his drink and he walked away. And I was like, “Did you want like - that’s, that's funny, but did you wanna like keep this or anything? Is this probably part of your uniform? Like you might need this.” And he, he didn't even turn around, he just left immediately. And I have since gone on to acquire other ties, but I do really like to wear this to formal events whenever possible. Because one, I think it's a really great color. It's, it's very striking. And two, because it reminds me how kind and caring strangers can be. It's really, to me, a powerful reminder of knowing that like, you are not alone in the world and that people, no matter how well you think you know your own deal, people can be understanding and kind. That was really significant to me, and I mean, I hope that guy's doing well, I have no idea. I'm gonna keep this, I mean, I've sewn it together when it's fallen apart, I’m probably just gonna keep it forever. Because yeah, it's like one, a cool accessory on its own, but two, it's a very sweet thing to me for a stranger to share clothing, particularly for another guy to recognize the guy in me and be willing to share something like that with a stranger. I mean, you know, in all honesty, he was probably about to quit that job and was like, “Fuck it, I don't need this uniform anymore.” And I don't think that makes it any less sweet. I've done the same thing many times with not just work clothes, but any sort of benefit that I can reap from work trying to share. You know, little freebies that I might get that have like expired food or, you know, obviously work related clothing or just like any sort of perk that you can give to someone else, especially someone else in the service industry, it, it's just such a really wholesome, interesting, and human form of currency and of recognition of the kind of work that we all put in to make this thing go around. So it's pretty cool.