This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Rich Cousin, The Identical Dress And We Are The Lucky Ones

The rich and not so rich; who is luckier? People with dignity, class and competency are rich.

A doctor was quoted today as saying “this man is the luckiest unlucky man you could ever meet. “He was talking about a police officer who is recovering nicely after being stabbed in the head. This is an interesting statement and of course, the officer is lucky to be alive because he had skillful care and is healing.

Many times, we think we have just had some bad luck. It could be we did not get the salary raise we felt we deserved; we had given our all for our job. It could be we have an illness that we surely did not deserve to get. It could be we lost out in buying the house of our dreams to another person who offered more money. There could be a myriad of causes for us to think we had bad luck.

I mentioned before that I won a four thousand dollar amount of money in 1958 at a raffle drawing. I shared the ticket with my boss and we each got about fifteen hundred clear after taxes which was an extremely large amount of money. I bought mom and dad a new dining room set, gorgeous, mahogany wood set and gave mom and dad a dream of a lifetime, because they yearned for a new one for many years.

Find out what's happening in Hunt Valley-Cockeysvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

So I was quite lucky that night when a Maryland Congressman Samuel Freidel pulled my winning ticket out of the bowl with ninety-nine other ones. There were no lotteries then, this was quite a lottery long before the now lotteries were a dream in many people’s lives.

My mother had a rich cousin and she came to a reception my mom and dad gave to mom’s sister who had married her husband in a ceremony in New York City and the families were all unable to attend due to not so great incomes in those days around 1943, when we were at war. Mom baked and cooked for weeks and finally the lovely day arrived and the bride and groom Ruth and Larry arrived to a family at our house and the partaking of Mom’s delicious food and sweets. Rich Cousin walks in and she is wearing her designer dress and lo and behold, my aunt’s sister who was not related to us, but was always invited to family affairs, came in wearing the same exact dress and in the same color as rich cousin. Rich Cousin took one look at Sadie, my aunt’s sister who was a secretary and when she saw Sadie in her dress, she departed in five minutes claiming she did not feel good. Everyone who knew her and her antics being a rich lawyer’s wife responded by saying this was what they would expect from her personality. She could not comprehend that Sadie and her were in the exact same dress. However, Sadie’s was as they call it off the rack meaning it cost less and Rich Cousin’s was from the designer dress collection. Actually, most men look alike when they go to formal affairs because they all wear black tuxedos almost in the same current style and maybe their tie is a bit different. Women, on the other hand do not like to be seen especially at a formal or even home gathering wearing the same color of the identical outfit. Normal and contented women would not have walked out of a party like Rich Cousin did.

Find out what's happening in Hunt Valley-Cockeysvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Rich Cousin (mom’s first cousin) probably thought she was honoring all of us with her presence in even coming to this home affair celebrating Ruth and Larry’s wedding. It was an indignity in her mind that this secretary should be wearing this identical outfit when she was only a working woman; and she, Rich Cousin was a big shot wife of a well-known lawyer.

She did not feel lucky; she probably felt she was the unluckiest woman there. Friends and relatives were gathered there at our modest home to celebrate that Ruth, a blind woman from birth had the lucky moment in her life in New York City to meet Larry and to find happiness even though she was blind.

Rich Cousin could not hold a candle to Aunt Ruth who although was blind, thought she was so lucky to have her good life with Larry, her excellent job in the sighted business world and most of all to have five living siblings, their spouses and their children present in her lucky life. Here we had all gathered to be with her and to honor, praise her and to acclaim the union of Ruth and her new husband. Rich Cousin was there by invitation as a relative; but she could not let go of a fashion statement and in her mind, an error that Sadie dared to have on her same outfit. Of course, Sadie’s dress probably in those days cost about twenty dollars if that and Rich Cousin might have paid the high amount of perhaps several hundred dollars. Interestingly enough, Sadie looked better in her cheaper dress than the cousin and guess what, Sadie had the slimmer figure to wear it with.

Mom and Dad were financially strapped as they called it in those lean years, but they always accomplished things with the quality they could afford, with the stylish manner they knew and most of all feeling lucky. We were together as our small family of the four of us and we were content with what we had and even did not have. We always had delicious food  made from scratch, no carryout’s in those days, a neat and stylish home furnished with modest furniture and  accessories, oil heat for warmth after Dad got us an oil heater and got rid of the coal furnace, he had used for many years. That in itself, made us feel as rich as Rich Cousin always appeared to be.

Every material thing we obtained was an event unto itself. Dad had a big walk-in closet built for storage for clothing, he had the front of the house repainted every five years, he finally bought a car when I was fifteen and you would have thought it was a Mercedes, because to us, it was. We got our first television set when I was fifteen and oh what a day it was when it was delivered. It probably cost about one hundred dollars or so and that was a large investment in those days.

Rich Cousin had so much more than all of us, but she had no dignity, no kindness, no love for her fellow relatives, no sophistication to handle the dress happening like a real lady. She was not the luckiest lady in what was given to her in her personality. She was quite unlucky having the attitude that she was better than the rest of us and especially Sadie. Sadie was more of a lady than the cousin. She laughed about the incident when she saw the other one walk out in a huff due to her having the same dress.

She said “good for me having the style and fashion competency to have bought the same dress as Rich Cousin and I paid about a hundred dollars less for it. That makes me a better shopper.”

I was about  eight at that time and took all this in and thought to myself in my eight year old mind; these grownups are sure silly acting this way about a piece of material. I knew I was lucky to be in my fine little family of the four of us and what did it matter that someone had the same outfit on as the other. What really mattered in Rich Cousin’s mind was that she had paid so much for her designer outfit and she was so rich and she probably thought she had come down in the world that day, even coming to this wedding reception in a neighborhood of homes not as wealthy as her neighborhood.

We had the last laugh, because everyone there at the reception were real ladies and gentlemen and the children were all smart, pretty and dear. Rich Cousin was not a real lady and if she taught her children these antics, than they were not rich kids. We were because we learned from our parents that our lives were full of riches. There is a saying that riches give you competency; it is wrong, being a decent person at all times makes you rich and that gives you the ability to be capable. A young man wrote at the end of one of my articles on Cockeysville.Patch. com after reading an article “I wish you were my grandmother.”

I wish for him to continue on believing and learning from my encouraging stories and he can be my email grandson because I see from his note, that he is capable, competent and caring. That is what being lucky is.He and we are the luckiest of the lucky and we know it.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Hunt Valley-Cockeysville