Q: Why was the rope so stressed out?
A: It was getting itself all tied up in knots!

Explanation: Last week an upset wire, this week a stressed out rope! Such is the pandemic life.

When you tie the ends of two strings together, or maybe both ends of the same string, you are tying a knot.  There are lots of different types of knots that you can learn to tie.  Here are 10 of them.  Sailors have their own set of knots.

To tie yourself up in knots is an idiom that means to make life difficult for yourself unnecessarily.  If you are trying to be too careful or trying too hard to do something you might tie yourself up in knots.

This joke is funny because it plays with two meanings of tying (yourself up in) knots: the literal definition of tying strings together and the figurative meaning of making problems for yourself.

Here are a bunch of ways to tie your shoelaces that I had never heard of: