Quantifiable Living: Windsor knot-Loneliness scale (for men)

Emotion: Loneliness (men)

Unit of measure: Windsor knot tying tries

How it works: For men, loneliness can be measured in the number of attempts it takes to tie a successful Windsor knot (aWk) in an average necktie, without help.

This scale may count imagined number of attempts rather than actual attempts, and includes attempts gone awry due to distraction as well as those due to confusion over how to tie a Windsor knot in the first place. It also includes attempts otherwise successful that cause the tie to hang at a socially inappropriate length down a man’s chest (too short or too long).

Examples:

You feel an impulse to work out for three hours at the gym: 4 attempts at Windsor knot (aWk)

Your cat has been missing for a week: 9 aWk

You have one acquaintance in the urban area in which you live and no romantic prospects: 17 aWk

Limits: The aWk quantity is partly a function of time, in that each attempt at tying a Windsor knot will take an average number of seconds; thus, the aWk quantity multiplied by time (i.e. 20 seconds) per attempt should not exceed the amount of time allotted to the activity for which one is dressing up.

If the aWk*seconds-per-attempt measure does exceed the time allotted to the social engagement, this may reveal that the man in question feels incapable of even leaving the house due to loneliness, and so may be a helpful measure – though strictly speaking, this is hyperbole and not scientific. The Windsor-knot-loneliness scale cannot accurately measure this depth of loneliness, which is properly called despair, and loneliness exceeding the scale’s limits should be recorded as “∞” or “infinity.”

Elaborations: For older men for whom tying their own necktie has become such a matter of course that they have difficulty imagining getting it wrong, a reasonably accurate alternate measure is the number of attempts to straighten the tied tie in the mirror before being satisfied that it’s straight.

However, to determine the limit of the scale in this case, due to the great range in amount of time it takes to attempt to straighten a tie (2 seconds – several minutes), attempts to straighten should be multiplied if necessary by the average amount of time it takes to tie a Windsor knot, in order to determine if despair (“∞” or “infinity” on the aWk scale) has been reached.

Bolo ties indicate negligible amounts of loneliness or desire for human female companionship, as with cowboys.

The highest levels of loneliness may be measured in bowtie-tying attempts.