Show Love, Be Inspired and Have Fantasies Elita Sohmer Clayman

In 1978 to 1984, there was a television series called Fantasy Island and starred the handsome actor Ricardo Montalban. People of all walks of life came to the island to live out their fantasies. When they arrived from the plane, they were announced by these words which became a well know saying. It was “the plane, the plane” given in an accented voice by the actor playing the part.

Every one of us has had or still has fantasies. Fantasies of maybe hitting the Lotto, of getting a better job that we are suited for, of going on a fantastic vacation, on winning first in a hobby event etc.

My now senior fantasy of sorts is to go back to my beloved ballroom dancing, that we use to go to every Sunday each month except for the one Sunday we went to visit the grandchildren and their parents out of state. I think I will try this Sunday to put in effect the dancing fantasy. We stopped because I had fallen going down a curb, not ballroom dancing, and the knees were not doing so well. Now, I think, I will attempt to conquer the old knees and the fear of falling while dancing. That will not happen and I am gearing up for this anticipation happening, hopefully this coming weekend.

I took out the special ballroom dance shoes we wear (with suede soles) which keeps us planted on the wooden dance floors, so we do not slip as we do the intricate steps and dusted them off. Perhaps, we will not remember the steps so easily, since we have not danced for six months. Dancing is like riding a bike; you really never forget the original actions. Your mind tells your feet what to do and your feet should obey. When I first started dancing in 1977, I and everyone who learns to dance, constantly looks at your feet. When you are told by the teacher, do not look, you do not believe him or her. How can I dance if I cannot look at my feet you say?

You learn very quickly, that is how it is done. On You Tube there is a short segment of a 94 year old woman named Matilda Klein who comes out with her teacher at a dance competition in a solo performance, the two of them. She comes out pushing a walker with him holding onto her arm, she has a net on her head and a jacket on and he dances around her and takes off her net from her hair, throws her jacket off, takes the walker to the side where the audience is sitting. Lo and behold, she stands up straight and dances like she is a young girl. They do the dance called the Quickstep and she is marvelous.

Here in Baltimore on tonight’s news, they show a lady who is 109 years old. People are living longer now days and doing things that were never heard of fifty years ago. When mom was working for the State of Maryland, the mandatory retirement age was seventy. She wanted to work several more years and she would have still been productive; the rules would not allow it. Of course, the boss stayed on to many years later than age seventy. There are many senators who are way over seventy. Ronald Reagan was president at the age of over seventy.

A young man wrote a comment at the end of one of these articles on Cockeysville Patch, that he wished I was his grandmother. I wrote him back that he can be my email grandson. I guess he figures at his young age of probably twenty something, that an old lady like me is pretty awesome. Another young person Shelby Stein wrote me that I am an awesome old woman after reading another article of mine. They are cute sentiments and I am proud to receive them. Awesome is my favorite word now.

I like to read unusual vanity license plates. My own car has the word Dancing on it.When I first wanted to get the plate, I was advised by the Motor Vehicle Department that the word dancing was taken, but I could have Dancin-no g on the end. That was available, so I had it for many years. When I inquired again several years later, they told me Dancing was available and it has been mine for about twenty-one years.

When a new neighbor moved in about that time, he came over and said “what does dancing mean?” I said proudly at about age  fifty-seven, that is what I do. I am a dancer. He looked at me and said nice. He himself was about seventy-seven at that time. Age is not a barrier to what we can accomplish now what with modern exercises we are told to attempt every day and pills to take for some aches and even physical therapy sessions for when we get in an accident, have an operation or just need some help moving around.

A license plate I saw the other day said Sholove. What a nice line. It really is Show Love. I have never seen one like that ever before. Another one I saw said B Inspird. I guess that is Be Inspired. I believe we are limited to 8 letters. Another one I have seen says Good Time. That says it all in those two words.

We should love, we should be inspired and we should try to have good times. Deepak Chopra says “If you want to be happy, make someone else happy.” There are people out there, strangers, acquaintances, family sometimes, who hurt our hearts with things they say. I would rather make someone happy by saying something complimentary, asking about their family, tell them they look nice and even listen to what they are saying and acting and or feeling interest in their comments. It is easier to be that way.

A friend told me that her daughter had a friend who made a comment to her about this friend. The daughter’s friend remembered when she was a teen living on the street where they both lived; she walked her dog and let her dog poop on this person’s property and then walked away. The lady told her several times, let him do it on your own property. The girl always walked away. One day, the lady rapped on the dining room window when she happened to looking out of it, meaning take your dog off my land. It was a cool day and she did not want to come out to address the girl with her dog because she had told her not to let him do it many times. Years later this perpetrator letting her dog do his thing on the other person’s property, told the daughter of this woman “your mother was mean, she rapped on the window, and she should have done it properly and told me in person to stop.” Instead of owning up to her doing obnoxious things on a neighbor’s land constantly; she turned it around and made the victim the bad person. Many people in real life, politicians and some business folks like to turn around something they are doing and make the other person feel as if they are doing the wrong things.

When I called up Macys customer service today to complain about a purse I had bought online, an expensive one I indulged in, and it came without the keychain and another piece which proclaimed the name of this costly item. I treated myself to it in honor of my writing one hundred articles on Cockeysville Patch; the customer service person in Arizona was so nice. She took my bit of aggravation and turned it into something very pleasant and informed me that they could not send another one; they did not have the exact purse in stock now. I asked her to take the missing two pieces off another purse and send them to me.She said they could not do it, but would give me 20 percent off if that was OK. At first, I said no, I wanted the designer pieces proclaiming I had earned this costly purse, but then I said out of frustration I would accept it. We had looked in all the paper wrappings coming with it via UPS and did not find those two pieces. Later on, when my husband was looking again, lo and behold, those two pieces were wrapped onto the straps and there they were in all their silly glory stating the name of the purse-Coach. I called them to tell them I found it and she kindly said “let it be for all your aggravation.” By that she meant that it took me six phone calls and lots of press one for this or that voices to finally arrive at her desk; so she replied, you can keep it.

It is the way we reply sometimes as to what the outcome will be. The ninety-four year young dancer came out with the walker, walking so slowly and when she was changed into a standing straight and tall person, hairnet off of her nicely coiffed hair, she became a different person. The neighbor asking me what Dancing meant, I could see in his demeanor, that he thought of me in a different manner. To the two young people who think I am an awesome old lady, their replies exhilarated me into feeling quite awesome. To the customer service representative who told me she had a Coach purse too and loved the two missing tags that I thought I had not received and she was very sympathetic to this question of mine on how to remedy the problem, she made me feel good about buying this expensive purse and not thinking I was a complainer. To the Department of Motor Vehicles lady who thought I was delightful in wanting to show off my hobby with the dancing license plate and offering me the word spelled without the g, that made me feel like a state worker cared about something like that. The young teen who thought I was not ‘polite’ to her when she did the wrong thing constantly to us with her doggie stuff; I hope in her older years, she realizes that she was wrong. I am sure now as a fifty something age person with her own home and property, she will not like a neighbor doing that to her. As an added line, we had two dogs, one at a time and in all their twenty-two years we had them, I can honestly say, neither of them, one named Candy, the other Rhumba ( for the dance) never, ever, ever did anything like that on another’s property. We had respect for our neighbors.

So go out and ‘Sholove, B Inspird’and still have your nice fantasies and as my two senior friends Steven Behr and Mary Peterson, who are now teaching dance for twelve days in Hawaii said to me for writing all my encouraging articles on ballroom dance-Mahalo Nui Loa meaning Thank You Very Much and I thank my Patch readers for reading and enjoying my articles. I try to show love to my readers and everyone I know, this is not a fantasy, this is the truth.