Making It

Some of the better parental conversations you can eavesdrop on were when you were riding in the backseat . I heard my father opine to our Mom about “success” once. He said, “If you don't make it by 40, you're never going to make it. If fact, you're a loser. As for women, the age 30 is the cutoff point.” This coming from a company man who threw himself into his work, did all the right things and was finally rewarded for his efforts at the age of 38 by being elected VP. Less than ten years later, he won the coveted CEO position. In less than a year after that, he dropped dead.


“...You're a loser.” My brother was with me in the car when we heard that. He and I brought it up a few years after Dad's death and shook our heads in a sense. We thought it superficial, shallow and a waste of one's life aiming only for power and money.


Add a few decades of experience to my life and I can see why Dad thought so. Being a child of the Depression, living under the rationing of WW2 and serving during the Korean war, he saw the world as a dangerous place and carving your space out in it, in whatever fashion, was necessary.


As for myself, success was far more personal than attaining an XO position at a corporation.


But, I have to add this, my Dad was right at times. I've seen this borne out a few times with people I've known.


I once watched one girl, who at 28 and one half, freak because she wasn't married, with child nor had the “house.” In the 18 months remaining, she gained all three before striking 30. After she accomplished all three, she could sit back and not count herself among the Old Maids out there.




It still occurs today. I know women in their 20's who give a worrying glance at that 30. They know, that by then, they cannot compete with girls in their 20's. As superficial as that sounds, it's not me saying this, it was them.


The guys I do know who put themselves on the career track, fought like dogs to win that position. Though today they are hired guns, looking for a bigger and better gig elsewhere. Still, the desire to “make it” is there. There are only so many slots on the governing board and not everyone who does have real talent, skills and luck can be fitted there. There's got to be many of these guys who nearly made it. Can you imagine, throwing your life's efforts into a “winner takes all” prize that's damned hard to attain..and not win it?


*****


As a kid, I didn't know how far my Dad went nor what it meant really. All I knew was that he worked at a bank in Providence.  One time when I was twelve, as my Dad sat at the kitchen table, on a working vacation dressed in a paint splattered golf shirt and really ugly shorts, called to me to see something. He pulled a good slug on his can of Narragansett beer and told me to hold out my hands. In it he dropped small piece of paper, the size and shape of a check.


“Read it.” he said with a nonchalance.


It read, “United States Federal Reserve Transfer/Boston District/Agents Only."


“So?” I say?


“Read the number.” he goes on.


I read the legal line which said, “$13,000,000.”


For a second, I though it was ours. My Dad interpreted my reaction and quickly said it wasn't ours at all. It was part of the business of the bank to transfer federal funds from here to there and whatnot.  Still, even though it wasn't our money, holding that amount of money amazed me.


My reaction had Dad beaming self-satisfaction,  I could see this clearly. He shone like the Sun.


Then I knew who he was. This was one of the guys who “made it.”

But that can come at a price...