The Golden Knob And A 16th Birthday Luncheon

When my brother graduated college at the age of twenty in 1949, jobs were hard to come by just as they are now. He earned a degree with a major in Biology thinking he would go to medical school. He did not get in because the rejections said he was too young and they had to take men who had come back from the war and give them a chance first. They advised him to apply in a year or two. My dad could not afford that; so he gave up on being a doctor and got a job as a salesman with a well-known shirt company here in Baltimore. It seemed like a good job for the first year or so.

One day he came home and told Mom and I that this beautiful shirt he was wearing was from their new line. It was a plaid pink, rose and turquoise greenish design which was unusual for men to wear in those days. Men usually wore white shirts, sometimes light blue ones and very rarely colored shirts. I do not remember my Dad wearing anything but white, once in a while a tan colored shirt. My brother said there was some left over material and they would give it to him as a bonus. Mom said yes and she went about finding a dressmaker to make me a gorgeous dress from it.

A new young woman had moved in the neighborhood and she was telling everyone that she was a school teacher, but on the weekends she was a designer type of dressmaker and would sew dresses or blouses for the neighbors for a fee. Mom took me there and she measured me and we brought a sample of that gorgeous shirt material. She told us how many yards to get and for ten dollars (a lot of money then) she would make me a gorgeous dress and I would be the envy of the girls in the neighborhood. She said her regular price was fifteen dollars.

Herb got the material and I went for a measurement fitting and then back to get it when it was finished.

Let me tell you, I felt like a movie star being fitted, measured and having a custom made dress made for me for my sixteenth birthday luncheon at a downtown restaurant called Baum’s.

When we picked up the dress, I carried it home covered by a material covering. I hung it in the closet and uncovered it and gazed at it daily, until the big event occurred one Saturday afternoon in June.

I put it on and felt like a million dollars and was so happy Mom had decided to do this plus the all-girls birthday party. They say clothes makes the person; it surely made me feel like a fashion model and also because my brother had thought to do this for me. We were five years apart in age and so he was always many years ahead of me in school. Actually he was two years ahead of others his age and that is why he graduated a four year college when he was only twenty and therefore, probably his medical school rejection because of his young years and the veterans returning home from the war. Some of them had college degrees and were applying to medical school upon their return.

The beautiful plaid dress was an inspiration for me at the young years of sixteen. The dressmaker said I looked gorgeous in it and she herself was a dramatic looking, slender and very attractive young woman. She said she always wanted to be a dress designer, but needed an income while striving for that career and so she became a school teacher to help with finances.

Herb went on to when he was thirty-six to change careers and he went back to school at that age to become a pharmacist and graduated from pharmacy school with honors at age thirty-nine and having a wife and two small children. So he had his career change, the salesman job was a fork in the road and the road came to a fine ending when he received his pharmacy degree. He was now in the medical world, not a doctor, but doing wonderful work in the pharmacy field.

There is a saying that goes like this “It is not what people think of you, it’s what you think of yourself.”

The dressmaker/school teacher thought of herself as a clothes designer, Herb thought of himself in the medical field. One way or the other, both of them achieved the area of work and education to fulfill their ambitions.

Another saying says “the moment you think of giving up, think of the reason why you held on so long.”

Many of us yearn to do things, try things, accomplish things, and when we reach a certain age, our brain may say one of two thoughts. Either it will relate to you “that it is too late in life for a change” or it will say “try it, it is never, never too late for almost anything you want”.

Do not let the doors of your life make the exit sign larger than the enter sign. You can always enter and do a feat you thought impossible. If you use the exit door, you then have given up on perhaps a lifelong dream, a signal of new happiness and perhaps another way to exist with gladness and contentment.

Walk through the enter door with your head held high (HHH) and do not exit until your commitment and dedication to your new desire is completed. Then, it is what you think of yourself becomes a priority in your living; you will have reached the pinnacle of life and the summit has become reachable and you got there because you never gave up on a dream. There was a song and a show called Impossible Dream many years ago and I always thought how wonderful it was to someday reach that impossible dream we all may have had.

I will be 83 on June twenty-first. I have outlived in years my dad who was seventy-two and six days when he passed on, my brother mentioned above who was seventy-two and eleven and half months, my mom who was seventy-seven and five months when she passed on. So now, I have passed them and I try to make the most of the blessing to me. I write these articles of inspiration, hope and encouragement to stimulate, arouse and motivate every one of their I call “NOW age” and do what you always wanted to achieve and bring it to fruition.

Remember to always think of yourself and give to your mind the thoughts that you are an achiever, a winner and that you never gave up. The pretty plaid dress, when I was sixteen gave me the inspiration to go on and to become a model for a year or two because I saw how pretty it made me feel. A simple thing like a custom made dress or anything else that inspires you to go forward and through the enter door is a very important chapter in your book of life. When I started to ballroom dance, the enter door opened again for me, because not only did I love to dance, I started to write all about it in magazines and online.

So any door that has a knob, grab the knob and see it as a golden knob for you to open up golden opportunities in your golden life.