Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day. The right to be foolish isn’t mentioned in the “Declaration of Independence” but I think it’s part of “the pursuit of happiness.”
We’ve all done foolish things. Often people who considered themselves wiser than us tried to convince us not to do them, but we didn’t heed the warnings. A few of those decisions turned out great and some ended with, “I told you so.”
One of my misadventures was going to beauty school. When I graduated from high school, girls who went to college became teachers or nurses. Neither of those professions appealed to me. I would become a hair stylist.
Mom tried to persuade me to first try office work using the typing, shorthand and bookkeeping skills I’d learned in high school, but I knew what I wanted to do. When I was a grade schooler, I’d visited the Rockford School of Beauty Culture with my mother. While she sat for a bargain-priced permanent, I admired the girls working on customers or each other. My parents gave in and paid the tuition for me to begin the six-month course.
It took only a few weeks for me to reluctantly admit Mom was right. Hair styling didn’t give me the satisfaction I’d expected to feel at the end of the day. I was ready to quit and look for an office job.
Mom insisted I finish because tuition money had been paid. I resigned myself to continuing until the course ended in January. I passed the state board test in Chicago and became a licensed cosmetologist in the State of Illinois.
A family friend offered me a job in the Rockford office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I enjoyed assisting Winnebago County farmers to take advantage of the federal programs.
What have been some of your foolish decisions?
One big blunder comes to mind. I left Karl, came back to Madison & worked very hard for two years to get my Masters Degree in Library Science. Then I didn’t go where the library jobs would be, but instead stayed in Madison partially because I really wanted to be here, and partly because the kids didn’t want to leave Madison. Natalie told me she would go to live with her father in South Carolina if I left Madison so I stayed, & accepted a secretarial position. Six years of college, and I settled so I wouldn’t lose my kids. It was the worse mistake I have ever make.